frontera

The Texas governor says  he will build the wall along the Mexican border

Wall along the border with Sonora.

Patrick O’Heffernan Ajiic. JAL. Citing a “crises at the border”,  the Republican governor of  Texas,  Gregg Abbot,  announced that Texas will build a wall between his state and Mexico, using state taxpayer funds and crowd-sourced money raised online. 

 Human rights and  immigration advocates responded quickly saying that the only crisis on the border  is the GOP’s lack of a coherent strategy  and  grandstanding stunts, adding that he does not have the authority to build a border wall.

“I will announce next week the plan for the state of Texas to begin the border wall,” said Abbot at a border security “summit” in Del Rio last week. This week he released details of a plan to use $250 million of state funds for a project manager and preliminary studies while he raised additional billions through a crowd-sourcing website.  

His announcement  did not address the question of how a state-operated wall would interface with Federal Immigration and Customs, since the state has no Constitutional role in visas, international trade, customs or border crossings. Critics pointed out that if completed, the wall could be an impediment to the thousands of tourists, US and Mexican citizens, and commercial trucks crossing the border in Texas every day, encouraging them to use New Mexico crossings instead of Texas facilities like Laredo.

He also did not address questions about how the state was going to force private landowners to give up their property for a wall when the Federal government was mired for years in court battles, which  were declared moot when President Biden cancelled the wall on his first day in office.