Title 42 ends: Texas moves to create own solution to Biden border policies
Rachel Schilke
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Texas state legislators are taking matters into their own hands after Title 42 expired Thursday night. The Lone Star State anticipates a flood of immigrants from Mexico and South America.
To combat an influx of illegal immigration, the state House is reviving HB 20, which would create a state “border protection unit” to “arrest, apprehend or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully.”
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These duties are traditionally under the federal government’s jurisdiction, but several Republican-dominant states are pushing similar legislation to combat what they call President Joe Biden’s “open borders policy.”
“The brutal reality of Biden’s immigration agenda should shock the conscience of every American,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a statement on Wednesday.
The administration’s policies “allow monstrous gang members, terrorists, human traffickers, drug dealers, and violent criminals into our country and demonstrate that the President is willing to sacrifice American lives for his open-borders agenda,” Paxton continued.
Under the bill, the state would grant additional powers to prosecutors to be used against immigrants. It would also make it a felony to trespass “knowingly” on private land when entering Texas. The offense used to be a misdemeanor.
Republican state Rep. Matt Schaefer, sponsor of HB 20, said the state needs this new “border protection unit” to alleviate members of the Texas National Guard units from a task they are not suited for.
“That sergeant standing by the river is a diesel mechanic from East Texas. He has to go back to his job, and in fact, the state can only keep him on active duty orders for a certain period of time,” Schaefer said in an interview with Fox 7 Austin, referencing a video of the border. “So, we have a temporary workforce that’s applied against a full-time problem.”
Texas Democrats worried the bill would lead to “vigilante” harassment of Hispanic counties that comprise most of those near the border, per the Hill.
“What is to prohibit or stop a Border Protection Unit from setting up their post in Hispanic neighborhoods?” Democratic state Rep. Erin Gamez, who represents a city near the Rio Grande, said during the bill’s debate.
However, Schaefer said members of the unit will be “professional state employees” and acknowledged that the state is in “uncharted territory.”
“I believe Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution talks about a state being [in] imminent danger. And when you have people die, you have women and children being exploited in great numbers — then I believe Texans are in imminent danger, and we need to step up and take a fundamentally bolder approach,” Schaefer said.
Republicans at the federal level are also looking to secure the border.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a sweeping border security bill on Thursday titled the Secure the Border Act of 2023. If passed, the bill will make asylum applications stricter, restart construction on the border wall that began under the Trump administration, and open immigration prisons that were closed under the Biden administration.
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Under the bill, “no funds are authorized to be appropriated to process aliens who arrive between ports of entry into the United States.”
However, the bill is unlikely to pass in the Senate and would face a Biden veto, the White House claimed.