Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded to what he called a “humanitarian crisis” occurring on the United States-Mexico border, assailing the Biden administration for keeping Texas state health and law enforcement officials from migrant camps playing host to thousands of unaccompanied minors, and for failing to keep the Texas state government appraised of the situation.
On Tuesday, The Daily Wire reported that the “child migrant crisis” has exploded and that the number of unaccompanied children being held at the border was 300% higher than previously known. Sources told CBS News that “more than 13,000 migrant children who entered the country without their parents are now in U.S. custody.”
Texas is being asked to shoulder the majority of that burden, and most of the camps holding child migrants are located along Mexico’s border with Texas. On Thursday, the Dallas convention center is expected to open to a temporary shelter for unaccompanied minors, operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and it could hold as many as 3,000 kids.
But, Abbott says, the Biden administration has been mum on the true extent of the “humanitarian crisis” that’s brewing along the southern border, and that it has failed to give the Texas state government specifics on the child migrant issue, and refuses to allow Texas state authorities to inspect Customs and Border Protection facilities housing unaccompanied minors.
Abbott says state health authorities specifically want to know whether the migrant children have been exposed to or tested for COVID-19.
“The Biden administration is not being transparent with either the governor of Texas or the Texas Department of State Health Services,” Abbott told Fox News. “We need to know what the health situation of these kids are. We need to know if they’ve been exposed to variants of COVID.”
Abbott told Sean Hannity that his “administration has not only denied access to data pertaining to the health of migrants in his state, but has also refused to share information that will aide law enforcement in arresting and prosecuting migrants that ‘are still involved with coyotes and smugglers.'”
“Our law enforcement … they need to do their job,” Abbott said Wednesday night. “Part of their job is making sure they track down and prosecute anybody involved in smuggling. Once they get over to Texas, they are still involved with coyotes and smugglers. We do have the ability to put them behind bars …[but the] Biden administration is not letting us gain access to that information so that we can arrest and prosecute those that are assisting this immigration process.”
“We have sought access to these shelters, and we’ve been denied access to those shelters, whether it be involving health care purposes or talking to these children about human trafficking,” he added.
“Americans need to know this,” Abbott warned. “This is just the very beginning of what’s going to be a massive expansion of the number of people coming across the board. It will grow tenfold and a hundredfold, especially because of the way the Biden administration has handled this.”
On Wednesday, The Daily Wire noted that the Biden administration was reportedly cracking down on border officials, preventing them from speaking to the press, and barring the press from getting close to border operations.
“Border Patrol officials have been told to deny all media requests for ‘ride-alongs’ with agents along the southern land border; local press officers are instructed to send all information queries, even from local media, to the press office in Washington for approval; and those responsible for cultivating data about the number of migrants in custody have been reminded not to share the information with anyone to prevent leaks,” an official told NBC News.