Gov. Greg Abbott made an appearance on Fox News Thursday to discuss the ongoing crisis at the southern border, highlighting concerns about the number of terrorist encounters reported in recent months.
In his appearance on America’s Newsroom, Abbott told Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer that he had become nervous about the future due to the high levels of people on the terrorist watchlist purportedly entering the United States.
“There are the terrorists who were actually apprehended. The terrorists apprehended are at an all-time record. Many multiples of those who came across the border under the Trump administration,” he said.
Although U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a record-high number of encounters with individuals on the terrorist watchlist during FY 2023, the majority of these encounters occurred along the northern border with Canada, data shows. CBP logged 564 encounters, with 484 at the northern border and another 80 at the southern border.
However, Abbott explained that many people crossing from the southern border “will pay extra not to be caught,” leading to concerns about what could happen if they are not apprehended.
“The chief job of the President of the United States is national security. President Biden is failing at national security. We are extraordinarily concerned about a terrorist attack occurring in Texas or elsewhere in the United States because the terrorists who are crossing our border will go unstopped by the bottom,” he added.
Abbott’s comments were made shortly after he attended an annual fundraising gala for the New York Republican Party, where he detailed work being done by the Lone Star State to manage the crisis.
The governor explained how Texas began a busing program in response to the increasing number of unlawful crossings. The program has sent more than 108,000 unlawful migrants to sanctuary cities all over the country since April 2022.
“When we began the bussing operation, it was going to one location. It was there on purpose because, remember, up to this time, neither Joe Biden nor the border czar had actually been to the border to see the chaos they had caused,” he said, per CBS News New York.
While the program started out only sending migrants to Washington D.C., Abbott said New York City Mayor Eric Adams “quite literally out of nowhere” made comments about the program that convinced him to begin sending people to other cities.
Abbott’s concerns about border security stem from the high volume of unlawful crossings occurring since President Joe Biden took office in 2021. CBP has logged more than 7.5 million encounters during this period.
Additionally, CBP states on its website that the agency had a total of 3,201,144 actions taken along the border during FY 2023, accounting for the 2,063,692 encounters by Border Patrol and 1,137,452 encounters at Offices of Field Operations.
Since Biden took office, CBP has reported an increase of at least 400,000 encounters each fiscal year, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
