Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed a “border czar” on Monday to speed up construction of the wall on the southern border of the United States with Mexico.
“It’s a full-time job, requiring a leader whose sole focus is responding to President Biden’s open-border policies,” Abbott said in the far-south city of San Benito.
The “czar”, Mike Banks, is a retired border guard, decorated and with more than three decades of experience on the border with Mexico and part of his mission will be to “accelerate the construction of the border wall in Texas”, added Abbott.
“A border wall (…) is just one way Texas is responding to President Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration laws,” the governor said.
Abbot will work with the Texas Department of the Military and Public Safety as part of “Operation Lone Star,” launched in 2021 to “deter and repel migrants illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico,” the state government said in a statement. release.
He announced that the procedures to acquire the rights to some of the lands where the construction will be extended have been accelerated, “so we can build more walls in the future,” he added. It costs $25 million per mile to build, he said.”
On Monday, the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, defended a government program to allow the monthly entry of 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have a sponsor in the United States and arrive by air.
Twenty red states, including Texas, have sued the Biden government over this measure, which they consider contrary to the law and which, according to Abbott, “will attract even more people to cross the border illegally.”
