HOUSTON — Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday ordered the Texas National Guard and state police to begin apprehending migrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico and turning them back at ports of entry, a move that could put the state in direct conflict with federal government over immigration.
Mr Abbott said in a statement that the aim was to return “illegal immigrants to the border to stop this criminal enterprise endangering our communities”.
The order, which greatly expanded the potential activity of Guard troops and state police personnel along the border, came amid growing pressure on Mr. Abbott from conservatives and Republicans to take even more drastic action to deal with record numbers of arrivals from Mexico. Federal agents recorded 240,000 crossings in May, most of them in Texas, although the daily numbers have declined slightly recently, an official said, citing internal data.
This week, Texas officials from counties on or near the border urged the governor to act, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called on Mr. Abbott to get state law enforcement personnel to “put their hands on people and send them back,” comparing the number of migrants , arriving in Mexico, with the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Republicans outside Texas also pushed for Mr. Abbott. “Texas just needs to send them back across the border,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said during a news conference last month.
Immigration has historically been the purview of the federal government, and states have been reluctant to seek to enforce federal immigration laws themselves, especially since a Supreme Court decision a decade ago struck down Arizona’s efforts to do so.
So far, Mr. Abbott has failed to achieve what many of his conservative critics have called for: a formal declaration of an “invasion” that supporters say would allow the governor to seize military powers and state law enforcement personnel not only to take migrants back at the border, but directly deport them.
In fact, the first criticism of his order came not from immigration advocates or civil rights groups, but from a former senior official at the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, who suggested the governor’s order did not go far enough. Mr Cuccinelli is actively urging Mr Abbott to make a declaration of invasion.
“The governor does not appear to be declaring a formal invasion or ordering the National Guard and Department of Public Safety to remove illegals across the border directly into Mexico,” said a joint statement by Mr. Cuccinelli and Russ Vaught, president of the Center for Renewing America, a conservative group with non-agricultural aim. “This is critical. Otherwise, it’s still catch and release.”
RAICES, a Texas nonprofit that provides legal services to migrants, said in a statement that the order was a “disgusting political stunt” and “illegal” and called on the Justice Department to “step in immediately.”
While Mr. Abbott has previously deployed thousands of National Guard members to the border, the troops have largely acted as lookouts, calling in Federal Border Patrol agents when they spot unauthorized migrants arriving.
In his Thursday order, Mr. Abbott appeared ready to test the limits of the law on immigration enforcement, saying the Supreme Court in a 2012 case had not specifically addressed whether a state could detain someone on suspicion of immigration offenses or whether the federal a law would prohibit this.
“It’s creating a test case,” said Stephen Vladek, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court rejected a similar effort by Arizona in 2012 to set immigration enforcement priorities, he said.
“But this is a different Supreme Court,” he added. “If you’re in Texas, you might think, ‘Here’s a good opportunity to see if there’s still a majority for this precedent.’
The governor’s order took effect immediately, but officials said the practical details of how it would be implemented were still being worked out.
It seems likely to complicate the relationship between state law enforcement officials and federal agents who routinely work together along the border.
Mr. Abbott’s office referred inquiries to the National Guard and the Department of Public Safety, neither of which responded to a request for comment. The Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol also did not immediately comment on the order.
A White House spokesman cast doubt on the governor’s order, criticizing his immigration record. “His so-called Operation Lone Star put National Guardsmen and law enforcement in dangerous situations and resulted in a logistical nightmare in need of a federal rescue,” spokesman Abdullah Hassan said.
Several questions remain about how the order will be implemented on the ground. It was unclear, for example, how far from the border the migrants would be detained, how they would be identified and what would happen to them after they were dropped off at the ports of entry, which are on a series of bridges between Mexico and Texas.
It is also unclear how the order will fit into Mr. Abbott’s existing efforts to deal with the arrival of migrants in Texas, one of which calls for law enforcement officials to charge those found at private ranches with trespassing. It was not expected to affect a state program in which migrants already processed by the Border Patrol are offered transportation to Washington or elsewhere on state-chartered buses.
Kate Huddleston, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas, said the order would encourage state law enforcement officers to “racially profile black and brown people” and that it “recklessly fanned the flames of hate in our state.”
Mr Abbott said his administration was considering taking the further step of invoking military powers to deport unauthorized migrants, but that there were legal concerns. Among them, he said, is the possibility that it would “expose law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas to prosecution” by the federal government.
But anger among conservatives grew, especially among those in communities near the border.
On Tuesday, several county leaders held a press conference and declared among themselves that the wave of migrants was an invasion.
“We’re here to change that,” said one of the county’s leaders, Tully Shahan, Keene County’s top executive. “We don’t want to lose America. The Biden administration can stop this thing this hour. They can stop it now.
Mike Bennett, Goliad County’s top executive, addressed Mr. Abbott directly, saying, “I’m asking the governor to step up today and deal with these people at the border.”
Mr. Abbott’s plan appears similar to tactics used recently by Keene County Sheriff Brad Coe, who said he drove several migrants from his county to a bridge in the border town of Eagle Pass and left them there.
“We returned four to the port of entry in Mexico so they could return home,” Mr. Coe said during Tuesday’s news conference. “There was no deportation. We picked them up, put them in the truck and drove them home.
James Dobbins, Zolan Cano-Youngs and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.
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