Greg Abbott, well known for doing everything wrong, is already sitting in seat 1A on the Crazy Train to 2022.  Because he has primary opponents to his right (if that’s even possible), he’s desperately trying to get farther right and has already targeted women, minorities, women who are minorities, children, the poor, the sick, and anyone not in perfect health.  As part of this targeting, Abbott had the great idea of taking immigration at the southern border away from the feds and empowered local law enforcement and state police to arrest anyone they suspected of crossing the border and being on private property.  The charge?  Trespassing.  The scheme includes not bothering with constitutional rights by quickly convicting, then jailing the immigrants.  When their sentences are served, they are then sent to the Border Patrol for deportation.  It’s illegal as hell, and Abbott knows it, but doesn’t care.

About 1,300 people have been prosecuted under Abbott’s scheme, and apparently that’s not enough, so apparently what’s happening is that when local law enforcement finds someone crossing the border on federal or federal land, the walk them to a ranch or other private property, THEN arrest them for trespassing.  The Val Verde County prosecutor just dropped trespassing charges against 11 men who claim they were apprehended, marched to a private ranch and ordered to climb a fence onto the property when they were promptly arrested.  Conveniently, there was no police body cam video from any of the officers involved in the arrest.  The case was so sketchy that the prosecutor determined the arrest was not prosecutable.

As anyone who is paying attention knows, the problem here is not fixed at the border.  It’s fixed in countries south of the border by forcing (and funding) countries in Mexico, Central and South America to root out corruption and crime as well as providing economic opportunity in these people’s home countries.  We also simply must stop allowing immigration to be a once every two years wedge issue and reform the system of entering the country into a workable system rather than allowing chaos to reign.  There is a solution to this problem, and politicians like Abbott are the wrong people to find it.