By Monica Showalter, American Thinker
Joe Biden is letting one of the largest illegal migrant caravans in history move into the U.S., with no effort to stop it.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, isn’t.
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.
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 laborous truck inspections which was 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, accordin 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.
Bensman’s report is absolutely fascinating in its detail about the agreement in place that was as good as gold for breaking up the vast migrant caravans heading to El Norte.
For that, Joe Biden should thank him for saving him from a public relations disaster. Which of course, he won’t.
What we see here is an amazingly good creative effort, by two governors to keep life normal, and illegal migrant disorder away from Texas. The Coahuila governor keeps cross-border trade in his home state. The Texas governor is spared the expense and mess of yet another border surge inundating his state. This has a rather interesting echo of how President Trump used to deal with Mexico — with direct force and action — shutting down the border until Mexico agreed to play ball on the “remain in Mexico” pact.
For Texans, this has to be a relief. There’s not a thing Joe Biden can do to stop this, and the caravan itself will be diminished in its impact with a simple solution that seems to be working, at long last getting home the message that lawlessness has some consequences for lawbreakers, too. Joe Biden could have done this, but of course, he didn’t. If a solution can’t be done through Biden, well, Abbott and his Mexican counterparts will show how this is done. Kudos to Abbott.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT CITIZENS JOURNAL Please keep us publishing – DONATE
