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Opinion: Greg Abbott declares war on international commerce

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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By the Editorial Board
Yesterday at 12:34 p.m. EDT
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As inflation spikes, a new contestant has emerged in the debate over who shares the blame. Add Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to the list of plausible villains.
Mr. Abbott, for whom there is no stunt too extreme in his crusade to make political hay over immigration, has launched a harassment campaign targeting trucks carrying Mexican goods legally over the southern border. They are loaded with critical supplies for auto manufacturers, food and fuel wholesalers, household goods enterprises and other U.S. businesses.
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Those trucks have already been stopped and inspected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at legal entry points along the frontier. Despite that, Texas state troopers — not officers with an authorized immigration enforcement agency — are detaining them on the specious grounds that some might be carrying contraband or undocumented immigrants. So far, there is no indication that Texas authorities have found contraband or migrants stashed away in those trucks; most of their citations have been for violations such as broken taillights.
Predictably, however, the detentions have caused major delays for trucks carrying tens of millions of dollars of goods daily across the border; forced other trucks to avoid Texas, adding hundreds of miles to their trips; and driven up costs for an array of companies that depend on timely delivery of supplies. That will add to inflation.
Mr. Abbott is in his second term and up for reelection in November. He was intentional about his latest bit of mischief and cognizant of its likely effects; in fact, he forecast them. “This is going to dramatically slow traffic from Mexico into Texas,” the governor said last week.
Yet perhaps even the governor couldn’t have foreseen the extent of the mess he set in motion. In response to what can be fairly described as his campaign of persecution, hundreds of Mexican truckers are protesting by jamming two major bridges in both directions at the border — one near McAllen, Tex., the other, 700 miles west in El Paso. Cargo has been backed up for miles, leaving fruit and vegetables to spoil and playing havoc with supply chains nationally. In a statement, the Customs and Border Protection agency called the state inspections “unnecessary” and said they had caused up to a 60 percent drop in cross-border traffic at those bridges.
Mr. Abbott’s meddling with international commerce is his latest gambit in what he calls Operation Lone Star, which is designed to make him look tough on immigration and President Biden feckless. In recent months, Mr. Abbott has deployed thousands of Texas National Guard troops to the border, where he has also been busy wasting taxpayer money to build short segments of a wall that has proved easy to cut through. He has also ordered state police to target migrants for arrest on misdemeanor trespassing charges, and said the state — again, taxpayers — would pay for free transport of those migrants who wish to go to D.C.
In effect, the governor has deputized himself as travel agent, federal immigration cop, wall contractor and commander in chief for what he’d like Texans to believe is a border war. His election-year showboating might be easy to dismiss — if it didn’t come at such expense to ordinary Americans.

 
Hopefully none of those kids shoot up a school. Abbott is pretty keen on fighting mental health fueled gun violence if you didn’t know.
 
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