Over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defended the state of Texas for taking border security into its own hands as the illegal immigration crisis has continued to worsen under President Biden.
Illegal immigration at the southern border more than tripled during Biden’s first year in office, setting a record high of 1,734,686 border patrol encounters of migrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border in fiscal year 2021. That record was broken again in 2022, with 2,378,944 encounters, and broken again in 2023, with 2,475,669 encounters. So far, fiscal year 2024 is on track to break last year’s record with reportedly around 302,000 encounters last month – the highest monthly total ever.
DeSantis made his comments after being asked about three migrants who drowned late last week in the Rio Grande River after the Texas Military Department took control of a region of the border and would not let federal agents enter.
“I think the state should be able to enforce immigration law. I will empower the states to do that,” DeSantis said during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“The federal government down there has frustrated Texas’ attempt to try to get people not to come across the border. And I think they will say that was on the Mexico side, and maybe the facts will come out and that will be clear one way or another. Obviously, it’s an unfortunate thing,” he continued. “But I think what Texas is trying to do is set a standard so that people know that they’re going to be turned away, rather than let in. Under the Biden administration, they let them in, they give them a paper, and release them to the interior of the country. That’s not a deterrent from being able to come.”
“If people know that they’re not going to be able to get in, then that’s a deterrent for people trying to come,” he concluded. “Why would you want to pay a smuggler, a coyote $5,000 when you’re just not going to be able to gain entry in the first place? So I’d like to see the federal government do more to help Texas to stop the influx. And I think that that would be better for everybody. And, honestly, it would be safer for a lot of the people that are coming, because they’re going through things in Mexico with the cartels that are not good. And some of these people are being treated very poorly.”
