Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced border security deals Thursday with two Mexican states who have promised to deploy their own police to patrol the southern side of the U.S.-Mexico boundary, in exchange for Texas ending its crippling safety checks on commercial cross-border traffic.
The deals with the governors of Chihuahua and Coahuila mirror a similar agreement Mr. Abbott signed earlier this week with the governor of Nuevo Leon.
Mr. Abbott says the agreements are the sort of thing the Biden administration should be doing, but he’s had to step in instead to “fill in the gaps.”
“Until President Biden decides to fulfill his constitutional duty to secure the border, we will continue to do whatever it takes to protect the safety and security of all Texans,” he said.
Mr. Abbott last week announced several moves in response to Mr. Biden’s decision to cancel Title 42, the pandemic border shutdown that’s prevented border-jumping numbers, already at crisis level, from turning into a catastrophe.
Homeland Security predicts numbers could triple to as many as 18,000 illegal crossings a day, or more than 500,000 a month. That would obliterate all previous records.
Texas responded by starting to bus some of the illegal immigrants to Washington, figuring to share the burden with the nation’s capital. And Mr. Abbott imposed enhanced state inspections on commercial traffic crossing into his state from Mexico.
Those inspections snarled traffic at border crossings, threatening the economic lifeline of northern Mexico communities.
Governors of those Mexican states have rushed to Texas to try to work things out.
The Mexican officials promised to try to detect and deter migrants trying to cross through their territory en route to the U.S.
Mr. Abbott agreed to curtail the inspections.
Texas borders four Mexican states and has only not struck a deal with Tamaulipas, the southernmost of the four, bordering Texas from Laredo down to the Rio Grande Valley.
The governor has emerged as the key foil for Mr. Biden’s border policies, and he’s drawn the ire of the White House for those efforts.
Jen Psaki, Mr. Biden’s press secretary, said the snarled truck traffic was contributing to supply chain problems that have bedeviled the president over the last year.