Opinion

Greg Abbott: Eric Adams is all talk when it comes to ‘open’ borders

Mayor Adams likes to pat himself on the back for welcoming migrants with open arms to his sanctuary city. That is, until he actually has to follow through on those lofty promises.

Since Texas began busing migrants to New York City from our southern border on Aug. 5, the mayor has been on a publi­city campaign fueled by outright lies and misinformation intended to distract from his hesitancy to provide the services and support he self-righteously touted on the campaign trail.

Adams’ fabricated claims about Texas’ treatment of migrants have no basis in reality. To be clear, any migrant who boards a bus from Texas to New York has signed an agreement to be transported to the city. All are provided food and ­water throughout the ­journey.

Adams talked the talk about being a sanctuary city — welcoming illegal immigrants into the Big Apple with warm hospitality. Talk is cheap. When pressed into fulfilling such ill-considered policies, he wants to condemn anyone who is pressing him to walk the walk.

Worst of all is Adams’ hypocrisy. He now complains that he and New York City are overwhelmed by migrants to such an extent that he demands federal help and discourages Texas from sending more buses to his city. Yet he remained silent when President Biden flew migrants into New York, many of whom ended up in New York City.

GREG ABBOTT
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says migrants were well taken care of and provided food and water for their journey to New York. Bloomberg via Getty Images/Shelby Tauber
texas migrants
Any migrant who boards a bus from Texas to New York has signed an agreement to be transported to the city. Reuters/Jeenah Moon

Adams claims that sending migrants on a roughly 30-hour bus trip to New York is inhumane. Where is his self-righteousness when it comes to the fact that Biden’s open-border polices are enticing illegal immigrants to trek — mostly by walking — thousands of miles through treacherous regions in Central America and Mexico, often subjected to rape and torture. Many of those migrants are killed or otherwise lose their lives attempting to come here, but that does not trouble Biden enough to meaningfully discourage such illegal immigration. To do so would violate his campaign promise to allow open-border policies if elected.

Adams — just like many Americans — is either unaware or refuses to acknowledge that the open-border polices he supports and Biden imposed funnel billions of dollars to the drug cartels that profit off of everyone crossing the border illegally. Inhumanity is the United States policy that aids and abets the cartels — and their US-based smugglers and human traf­fickers.

Horrors of San Antonio

Surely Adams has not forgotten the 53 migrants who died in the back of a tractor-trailer truck near San Antonio in June. Events like that are not uncommon, and they are a direct byproduct of people like President Biden and Mayor Adams who encourage and support immigration that does not comport with federal laws.

What Adams is dealing with is a trifle of what small border towns grapple with daily. More than 2 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border in the past 11 months — many of them pouring into Texas towns with populations far fewer than 50,000.

Those communities have been ripped apart by cartel-infused crime that destroys ranches, invades homes and threatens the safety of Texas residents along highly trafficked areas of the border.

The Biden administration has paper-processed hundreds of thousands of migrants who are dropped off in those small Texas towns, leaving them helpless to deal with the massive influx. As the mayor of Carrizo Springs recently recounted, federal authorities one day told city officials that an unspecified number of processed migrants would be released into the town of roughly 5,000 Texans — beginning the next day. This came despite obvious objections that the city lacked the resources to take in hundreds of migrants daily.

Texas has been left to fend for itself. It’s the only state in history to build its own border wall. I have deployed the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to repel and arrest illegal immigrants and to seize weapons and deadly drugs like fentanyl that pour across our border. I have yet to receive a thank-you note from Adams for Texas law enforcement seizing enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in the state of New York.

Mayor Adams likes to sloganeer that “This is America” and we need to start acting like it. Damn right! We are a nation of laws. It’s time to start enforcing them. Doing that would begin to restore the “humanity” he is clamoring for.

Greg Abbott is the governor of Texas.