AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ordered state police to resume inspecting trucks entering Texas from Mexico after 53 migrants died in a tractor-trailer abandoned near San Antonio.
Abbott continued to blame President Joe Biden, saying the truck carrying Mexican and Central American migrants who died wasn’t inspected by Border Patrol agents because that federal agency lacks sufficient manpower.
The death toll among unauthorized immigrants crossing deserts or clambering into the back of trucks as temperatures soar will keep rising if Biden doesn’t act, Abbott warned.
“I urge the president, stop the loss of life,” said Abbott, a two-term Republican who is up for re-election this year. “You have the ability to stop people from losing their lives if you make it clear that no one can come across illegally.”
The White House said Tuesday the fact migrants are desperately taking chances by paying coyotes for illicit transportation proves that federal border enforcement is tightening.
On Wednesday, Abbott said he was ordering the Texas Department of Public Safety to create additional truck checkpoints at the Texas-Mexico border and to immediately begin inspecting more incoming trucks.
“They will begin targeting trucks like the one that was used when those people perished,” he said, referring to a stifling trailer in San Antonio where dozens of migrants died after being abandoned in the sweltering heat earlier this week.
In early April, Abbott ordered an initial round of state truck inspections on international bridges after declaring that the Biden administration had failed the country when it comes to border safety. At the time, the governor said DPS workers inspecting the commercial vehicles would disrupt efforts to smuggle people and drugs across the border.
But the stepped-up safety inspections, which were in addition to other inspections by the federal authorities, increased wait times at the border. Last spring, some truckers interviewed at the crossings said they had to wait two and three days to cross.
Amid negative publicity about rising prices of produce and manufacturing disruptions, Abbott agreed to ease the inspections in return for security commitments from the governors of all four Mexican states that border Texas: Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. The governors each met with Abbott to publicly explain their ongoing border security efforts.
Abbott continued to say, though, that the inspections might resume if migration increased.
Speaking at a news conference in Eagle Pass on Wednesday, Abbott said there has been a “meaningful rise” in illegal crossings this summer.
Migrant caravans are “disbanding to some extent,” but that doesn’t mean numbers of illegal crossings won’t keep rising, he said.
His April security agreements with Mexican border governors have produced law enforcement activity on the Mexican side of the border that has helped deter large migrant caravans, Abbott said. He and a state police official spoke of “mirrored activity,” or simultaneous and coordinated actions by law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border.
“The Biden administration still is doing nothing whatsoever to stop them,” he said of caravans and smaller groups of migrants.
The Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is “ground zero” for illegal crossings, the governor said.
Texas officials continue to conduct “mass migration rehearsals,” to be ready for caravans, he said.
Also, DPS will form two “strike teams” to “detect, deter and apprehend” unauthorized immigrants, he said.
The state police and Texas National Guard soldiers will try to block as many low-water crossings as possible, Abbott said.
Abbott suggested more actions are coming.
“Texas is going to take action to do our part to try to reduce the illegal immigration coming into our country,” he said. “We’re going to be adding more resources and stronger strategies to control all the border land that is owned or controlled by state or local governments.”
The state also will continue to press private landowners to let Abbott’s Operation Lone Star come on their land, erect barriers such as fencing or concertina wire, and let state police arrest migrants for trespassing, the governor said.
Including recent fund transfers by Abbott and GOP leaders, Abbott and the Legislature have committed almost $4 billion in state money to border security in the current two-year budget cycle — a nearly fivefold increase from past state budgets.
Within two months of Biden’s taking office, Abbott began saying the new Democratic president was responsible for a surge in border crossings.
Abbott has used state funds and private donations to pay for buses to transport thousands of asylum-seekers to the nation’s capital, to signal they aren’t welcome in Texas and try to embarrass Biden.
The sparring intensified after this week’s mass deaths of migrants found in the abandoned semi near San Antonio.
“These deaths are on Biden,” the governor said on Twitter. “They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”
Biden, who was in Spain for a NATO summit, fired back.
“Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy,” he said.
On Wednesday, identification of the victims proceeded slowly because of lack of identification, slow exchanges of fingerprint data and difficulty reaching relatives in remote villages in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, The Associated Press reported.
According to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, 40 of the victims were male and 13 were female.
The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio in what is believed to be the nation’s deadliest smuggling episode on the U.S.-Mexico border. More than a dozen people were taken to hospitals, including four children. Three people have been arrested.
The truck, which was registered in Alamo, Texas, but had fake plates and logos, was carrying 67 migrants, Francisco Garduño, chief of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, told AP.
The driver was apprehended after trying to pretend he was one of the migrants, Garduño said. Two other Mexican men also have been detained, he said.
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