OPINION:
At long last, government officials are doing something about the Mexican drug cartels that are ravaging America. It’s not the feds in Washington who are stepping up to defend the homeland, though, but responsible lawmakers in Texas.
His naked malfeasance exposed, President Biden can no longer disguise his unvarnished role as chief national security pretender.
Last week, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bevy of bills, including one that designates Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and adds the cartels to national-security intelligence databases.
Moreover, Mr. Abbott has urged Mr. Biden — futilely — to similarly label those criminal enterprises operating with impunity along the nation’s unprotected southern flank.
The new law and five others, Mr. Abbott said, are meant “to ensure that Texas can continue to do even more to stop illegal immigration at our southern border and provide new tools to the brave men and women along the southern border to protect Texans and Americans from the chaos and crisis of the border.”
As Mr. Biden’s Washington sleeps, Texas and other states have little choice but to use their own wits to parry the largest influx of illegal immigrants in U.S. history.
As the human flood surges northward, those not directly devastated by the associated fatal poisoning of nearly 110,000 people in 2022 by cartel-distributed synthetic opioids are nonetheless forced to fund benefits for more than 5 million cartel-smuggled entrants, estimated to cost $150.7 billion annually.
Other Texas measures include authority for state military forces to monitor the Texas-Mexico border with unmanned aircraft and to participate in search-and-recovery operations following natural disasters; expand the authority of U.S. Border Patrol agents to conduct searches and make arrests for felony law violations at ports of entry; and to coordinate intelligence and detection measures with other states.
Preceding the lifting in May of Title 42 — emergency coronavirus immigration restrictions — Mr. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security formed a veritable partnership with Mexican immigration officers to speed — rather than impede — the profusion of illicit border crossings.
As reported by Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, Customs and Border Protection officials in Brownsville, Texas, were signaling their Mexican counterparts by radio when to send immigrants across the Rio Grande in orderly groups to facilitate their processing and transportation to U.S. destinations.
Thankfully, the chaotic crossings that topped 10,000 a day have dwindled, but mostly owing to the CBP One app, which assists 1,250 immigrants a day in scheduling unlawful entry appointments online.
Under Mr. Biden, the border has been transformed, in effect, from a guarded gate to an open gateway.
The eventual effect is to reconfigure the United States as a post-national entity linking North America and South America, where individuals may come and go — but mostly come — as they please.
President Biden shows no intention of ceasing his pretense of national security while allowing the Mexican cartels to flood the U.S. with illicit newcomers and drugs.
Americans who voted for the president but disdain his open-borders policies can only hope Texas succeeds in slowing the waning of the nation hastened by their ballot-box blunder.
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