▲ The Greg Abbott government has detained 518 thousand undocumented immigrants with the Operation Lone Star, which includes deployment of military personnel.Photo Ap
From the Editorial Staff and Agencies
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 17, 2024, p. 3
Texas has tripled its barbed wire barriers to prevent the entry of undocumented immigrants, while arrests on the southern border of the United States fell by 33 percent in July, their lowest level in 46 months, as a result of the temporary suspension of the right to asylum, US authorities reported yesterday.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas National Guard hope to secure the border with expanded fencing, the governor’s office said in a statement.
In addition, he said, they plan to stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people into Texas, as well as prevent, detect and impede transnational criminal activities at entry points.
Illegal crossings decreased by 85 percent in Texas, while in other border states, such as Arizona and California, they increased, the document notes.
Since the launch of the Operation Lone StarIn March 2021, 517,900 undocumented immigrants were detained and more than 46,000 arrests were made on criminal charges, of which 39,900 were for serious crimes. In the fight against the fentanyl crisis, Texas law enforcement seized more than 518 million lethal doses of the drug, enough to kill every man, woman and child in the United States and Mexico
he assures.
Meanwhile, the Texas governor claims that from 2022 to date he has sent 45,900 migrants to New York City; 36,900 to Chicago; 19,200 to Denver; 12,500 to Washington DC; 3,400 to Philadelphia, and 1,500 to Los Angeles.
This week, Abbott shared information on social media X about the progress of construction of a border wall in Val Verde County and the military base in Eagle Pass, noting that the state continues to expand state-of-the-art facilities that will house thousands of National Guard troops stationed along the border.
Texas will continue to use all tools and strategies to defend our constitutional right to protect the border.
underlines on its official website. This strategy continues Filling the dangerous gaps created by the Biden-Harris administration’s refusal to secure the border
the statement highlights.
Meanwhile, the Border Patrol made 56,408 apprehensions last month, compared with 83,536 in June, according to the Customs and Border Protection Office, the AP agency reported.
The decrease is attributed to the suspension of the right to request asylum from northern Mexico, which was implemented on June 5, after arrests for illegal crossings exceeded the threshold of 2,500 per day.
These new figures could give some relief to Democrats on an issue that has plagued them throughout Joe Biden’s presidency and is very important in the election campaign. The Biden-Harris administration took effective action, and Republicans continue to do nothing
White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández reproached.
More than 38,000 people entered the United States through land border crossings using an online appointment system called CBP One, bringing the total to more than 765,000 since the system was implemented in January 2023.
The Department of Homeland Security is working to resume processing applications as soon as possible, with appropriate safeguards in place.
CBP said in a statement, saying that starting next Friday it will expand to a large part of southern Mexico the areas where non-Mexican migrants can request an appointment online to apply for asylum in the United States. Mexicans can apply from anywhere in the country.
The move requested by Mexico could ease pressure on López Obrador’s government by allowing migrants to wait for their appointments in the south, farther from the northern border, and reduce the dangers for people trying to cross the country to seek asylum.
