Governor Greg Abbott hosted 45th President Donald J. Trump for a border security briefing with state officials and law enforcement and for a tour of the unfinished border wall in the Rio Grande Valley.
This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics taken up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the discussions but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.
Governor Greg Abbott
- Welcomes President Trump back to Texas; commends him for securing the border
- Increase in border apprehensions has gone up since the Biden Administration took office
- Vice President Harris is misleading Americans
- Biden Administration needs to devote resources to the border
- Importation of deadly fentanyl has increased
- What Texas has done in response:
- Operation Lonestar: deployed Texas National Guard and DPS officers
- County Judges requested a disaster declaration
- Passed more than a billion dollars for funding for Texas to secure our border and build a new border wall
- Created a Border and Homeland Security Task Force
- There is now an interstate contract to help secure the border
- Florida, Nebraska, Arkansas, Georgia, and more are contributing resources to Texas
- We are doing all that we can to protect the people that live near the border
- This is the Federal Government’s job, and the Biden Administration is failing
Steve McCraw, Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety
- Lack of border security has transformed Mexican drug trafficking
- Mexican cartels apply military force to support their operations
- Migrant apprehensions have dramatically increased
- Border patrol is overwhelmed which leaves a gap that criminals take advantage of
- Fentanyl is crossing the border at an unprecedented rate
- Anything we can do to prevent cartels from entering the United States is valuable
Bill Waybourn, Tarrant County Sherriff
- Low level dealers have high quantities of fentanyl
- Texas is facing an abundance of drugs
- It only takes 2 or 3 milligrams of fentanyl to kill someone
- There has been a 50% increase in deadly overdoses this year
- Hitting the 16 to 24-year-old groups the hardest
- Cartels are getting the fentanyl in China and bringing it into the United States
- Drug cartels in Mexico should be the number one enemy of law enforcement in Texas
Benny Martinez, Brooks County Sherriff
- Are recovering an increased amount of bodies
- Brooks County has had an increase in apprehensions, rape cases, 911 calls, smuggling, etc.
- Damage is being done to ranchers and their property
- We need to know who is coming in
Former President Donald J. Trump
- The border went from the best that we have had to a state of crisis
- Democrats are now running a disinformation campaign
- Human trafficking and fentanyl were decreasing and now they both appear to be on the rise
- Border control was down to a science and drug trafficking had dropped
- Our elections are now a disaster
- Democrats are either incompetent or they really want open borders
- Countries are releasing people from prison and they are coming into the United States
- We had great policies that were ended in the first week of the Biden Administration