Abbott’s office labels Newsom a ‘hypocrite’ for his ‘superficial’ handling of the border crisis

The office of Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) blasted an effort by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to send more military to the border as being for the sake of optics, not security.

Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris chided Newsom in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner over the weekend and called the California governor’s announcement to double the number of state military at the Mexico border a move that would save face but not remedy the situation.

“Because of Texas’s efforts to secure the border, illegal crossings have decreased in the state by 74% while it’s gone up 33% in states like California and Arizona,” Mahaleris wrote in an email. “Now, because the cartels are taking advantage of President Biden’s wide-open borders to smuggle people and drugs across the California border, hypocrite Governor Newsom finally has to admit there’s a crisis at the border and pretend to do something about it.”

Late last week, Newsom said he would boost the number of California National Guard soldiers near the San Diego border from 155 to 392.

But the beefing up of security isn’t for the illegal immigration surge, according to Newsom. Present soldiers will continue to be assigned only at ports of entry to assist federal officers in screening commercial trucks, passenger vehicles, and pedestrians for fentanyl smuggling.

“California has doubled our National Guard at the border that are working to stop the flow of fentanyl,” Newsom wrote in a post to X last Thursday. “While the GOP play games and Mike Johnson searches for his spine — we’re out here doing the work.”

Newsom suggested that state military would not be involved in apprehending illegal immigrants who come across the border between ports of entry. Instead, military would be based at ports and help, through means that were not laid out, federal police search for fentanyl in incoming traffic.

Mahaleris dismissed Newsom’s military deployment as nothing more than a politically guided move that would fail to respond to the thousands of illegal immigrants who have crossed into California from Mexico each week after the flow of people has shifted from Texas to California since 2021.

“If Governor Newsom was serious about securing the border, he wouldn’t just send 400 troops to push paper at ports of entry. He would follow Texas’s lead,” said Mahaleris.

When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, two in three illegal immigrants caught entering the United States from Mexico were apprehended in Texas. Now, Abbott said, that figure is down.

A Washington Examiner analysis of federal border data in February revealed that two in three illegal immigrants arrested at the southern border now occur outside Texas, primarily in California.

In early 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a statewide initiative that sent more than 10,000 Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers to regions of the border to help federal law enforcement catch smugglers moving immigrants across the river.

The state has built a border wall, installed a wall of buoys in part of the Rio Grande, apprehended hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, and put up dozens of miles of barbed wire to deter illegal immigrants from entering Texas.

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“Under our historic border mission, Texas has allocated more than $11 billion of Texas taxpayer money to secure the border, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers, setting up a military base on the border, installing strategic barriers, and building our own border wall,” Mahaleris said.

Newsom did not respond to a request for comment.