Here in Texas, some of Governor Greg Abbott’s border security moves (like sending the National Guard to the border) have been derided as all hat and no cattle. But it appears that Abbott has scored a definite border security win.
According to a very interesting report by Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies, the record-sized 15,000-strong caravan has run into interference from the Texas governor and his counterpart in the adjacent Mexican state of Coahuila, who had the foresight to sign an agreement in April about border security. Bensman writes:
AUSTIN, Texas — When Mexico last week granted federal humanitarian travel permits to 15,000 U.S.-bound third-country migrants who’d formed the largest caravan in Mexican history, most planned to head straight to the border to cross illegally into the Texas towns of Del Rio and Eagle Pass.
But now those thousands of federal permit holders have collided with an unusual and wide-ranging Coahuila State police roadblock operation that is systematically halting buses carrying the migrants all over that state, detaining and deporting some, and thwarting federal government will.
Few, if any, of those thousands are finding their way over the Rio Grande into the Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector. Mexican state police are blocking northbound commercial buses at the bus station in the Coahuila state capital of Saltillo, and at many other stations, and emptying migrants from trucks and vans at checkpoints on all roads leading into that state’s border cities of Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, and Acuna, across from Del Rio, according to Mexican press reporting.
The migrants who thought they were a day or two away from crossing into Texas, where the Biden administration will admit most of them, are reported to be infuriated. In many cases, the state authorities are “deporting” the immigrants they catch, although it was unclear to where. The operations have sparked civil disobedience disturbances in Saltillo, protests elsewhere, and closure Tuesday of the international bridge between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras when 100 of the caravan migrants tried to hop a train over and battled Mexican authorities who stopped them.
The migrants think they’re pretty entitled to enter the U.S. free of charge and vetting.
What happened here was that Abbott and his Mexican counterpart in Coahuila, Gov. Miguel Angel Solis, signed a security agreement two months ago to keep the border area secure.
The impetus for the agreement was Abbott’s shutdown of Texas-Coahuila border trade, with intense truck inspections that slowed commerce as Abbott’s troopers searched vehicles for evidence of migrant-smuggling.
It was a very Trumpian move on Abbott’s part to slow roll the Mexican trucks, and he received a lot of heat for it, but like many Trumpian moves, it worked by threatening something the other party desperately wanted (the economic security of Coahuila).
What drew headlines at the time was Abbott’s transport of illegal migrants to Washington, D.C., but the power move on his part was in the laborious truck inspections, which were a problem for the Mexicans. The Mexican governor wanted that stopped, because it was hurting the normal economic activity of Coahuila, and he (along with three other Mexican governors, according to Bensman) signed the agreement with Abbott to get it stopped.
That’s why the roadblocks and ship-backs in Coahuila, courtesy of Mexican state police, are going strong now. The Mexican state cops aren’t putting up with these caravans from the migrants from some 150 countries at the expense of their own economy. They’re breaking these cartels up and sending the migrants back, one truck at a time.
The president of Mexico permitted their sending, and Joe Biden, of course, had planned to welcome all comers. But the two governors wanted normal life to go on, and the Mexican governor got busy with his end of the bargain to put a stop to the whole thing right then and there.
Between this and the Texas lawsuit win against the Biden Administration’s policy of not detaining illegal aliens, the State of Texas has scored significant wins for border security and the rule of law this week.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Tags: Acuna, Border Controls, Center for Immigration Studies, Coahuila, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Greg Abbott, Illegal Aliens, Miguel Angel Solis, Piedras Negras, Texas, Todd Bensman
When central authority fails, local authority either follows that authority into collapse, or it acts for itself. Texas stands a chance of being “lone survivor” of the state governments in the US as time goes on. Most of the rest will follow the central government into collapse, as reliant as they are are central government authority and legitimacy.
The follow-on from the current governmental system losing the consent of the governed ain’t going to be pretty. But, it is coming. Ineffectual government and law enforcement are as damaging and deleterious to the legitimacy of government as the partisan BS that is currently infesting the law enforcement agencies of the central government. Coupled together, they’re pissing away legitimacy like there’s no tomorrow, which there isn’t. For them.
At some point in the probably not-so-distant future, the President will say something, and it will be entirely ignored by anyone who matters. Same with Congress, same with the Supreme Court. If it doesn’t work, it gets abandoned. The Federal Government will wind up like some colossal ruin, inhabited only by the remaining vestigial parasites, obeyed nowhere and only fulfilling ceremonial duties like some vaguely remembered cargo cult, hoping that if they ape the forms of power, it will again manifest itself for them.
From a quote in the article linked above: In many cases, the state authorities are “deporting” the immigrants they catch, although it was unclear to where.
LOL! Yep, I bet no kid gloves treatment by the MX state authorities like those ‘immigrants’ would have received if they had gotten crossed the US border.
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