Texas Border County Votes to Sue Biden Over Failure to Secure Border: 'Enough Is Enough'
Val Verde County, which lies directly above the border between Texas and Mexico, announced Tuesday it will seek to form a coalition of southern border counties and cities to sue President Joe Biden over his failure to enforce U.S. immigration laws.
The unanimous vote of Val Verde’s county commissioners came after the city of Del Rio, located in the county, saw a surge of tens of thousands of migrants, mostly from Haiti, Townhall’s Julio Rosas reported.
A makeshift migrant camp, reaching at its peak 15,000 people, formed under the International Bridge at Del Rio earlier this month, which border officials cleared last week, releasing most of the migrants into the United States to await immigration proceedings to determine their status, according to Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate KTVT-TV.
NEW: From our @FoxNews drone, a look at the migrant camp under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning, where thousands migrants remain after they crossed into the US illegally. pic.twitter.com/06sUY2XCi5
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 19, 2021
“Fifty percent of the population of this city was sitting underneath our International Bridge — how is a town of this size, with our tax base, supposed to deal with that problem,” Val Verde County commissioner Beau Nettleton said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“It is time that we get together with other counties and cities along the border and stand up and do something,” he further stated.
“I don’t have the answer to whether a lawsuit solves this problem, but it draws attention to this problem.”
Nettleton argued that the Biden administration needs to do its job and enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
[firefly_poll]
“They took the same oath of office that I did, which was to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the laws of the state of Texas. That was the oath that I took. They took the same oath,” he said.
The commissioner added that he’s all for people entering the country legally, but the current chaotic mess cannot continue.
#BREAKING Val Verde Co. to form coalition w/other border counties/cities to sue @POTUS “for failure to enforce the laws of the Constitution of the United States & failure to abide by his oath of office” & failure to protect/defend border. Vote was unanimous among commissioners. pic.twitter.com/GItZCvyyAT
— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) September 28, 2021
“It is inexcusable,” Nettleton said, and the entire system must be reformed.
He contended that a lawsuit is “our chance to stand up and do something, to make a statement and make a point that enough is enough. This needs to end.”
Val Verde Co. Commissioner Nettleton says he blames Congress and the President— Saying, “Enough is enough.” #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/VgKTq1tMAE
— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) September 28, 2021
The number of those apprehended crossing the southern border illegally during the fiscal year 2021 exceeds the population of 11 American states.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, so far there have been over 1.5 million encounters of people crossing the southwest border through August.
That number will go up by 200,000 or more when September’s encounters are included, if recent trends continue.
By comparison, there were just 458,000 encounters during all of the fiscal year 2020.
Last week, 26 Republican governors — including border Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas — sent an urgent letter to Biden seeking a meeting to discuss the border crisis within 15 days.
NEW ? 26 GOP Governors Demand Biden End The Border Crisis
GOP Govs led by @dougducey and @GregAbbott_TX issued a joint letter to Joe Biden requesting a meeting within 15 days to discuss the crisis at the southern border. pic.twitter.com/tVnvw5q5lw
— The RGA (@GOPGovs) September 20, 2021
In a Newsmax interview this week, James Carafano, a national security expert with the Heritage Foundation, argued that what happened in Del Rio has now become part of the playbook for illegal entry into the U.S.
“They’ll just throw a camp up on the border, put thousands of people there and then the Biden team will be so anxious to get it off of the news cycle, they’ll just take those people and ship them right into the interior,” Carafano said.
#BidensBorderCrisis is FAR from over.
Border apprehensions are up almost 500% compared to last year—totaling over 1.3 million people.
That’s more people than the populations of 9 U.S. states… and more caravans are on the way.
Insights from @JJCarafano: pic.twitter.com/NyGC7DzkpC
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) September 29, 2021
“Look, we’re going to wind up with not millions, but if we keep this up, ten of millions of people coming in,” he predicted.
Carafano argued that the Biden administration really wants open borders, despite anything officials might say to the contrary.
“They’d like to hide that fact as much as possible from the American people,” he said, “but at the end of the day, when the open-borders people say, ‘Do this,’ they jump.”
