Texas blocks illegals at Brownsville border

 Todd Bensman, NY Post:

MATAMOROS, Mexico — For two red-hot weeks, this Mexican city across from Brownsville, Texas was the hottest spot for illegal immigration on the southern border.

But no more, thanks to a very unique, forceful and controversial Texas intervention that looks to become a long-term influence on national immigration policy.

Non-plussed by the empty threat of Title 42 expulsions in the final days of that hollowed-out policy tool, mostly Venezuelans in huge crowds in late April started surging into the Rio Grande water in numbers that have quickly reached some 10,000, pushing Brownsville into declaring a state of emergency.

By the time I got to town on Monday to cover Title 42’s end of days, immigrants coming off buses at the Matamoros station were still storming over the river, straight into the warm embrace of President Biden’s distant Border Patrol agents to receive the mythical reward of which they had all heard: the Biden government was processing most from riverbank to American heartland within 48 hours.

My narrated video of these mad charges noted the absence of any badged or uniformed opposition on the Texas side.

That video of pell-mell unopposed immigrant entrances onto Texas soil evidently so rankled Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, I have been reliably told, that he finally ordered something many constituents had been pressing for since the border crisis began on Biden’s Inauguration Day.

He put state troopers and a tactical National Guard Unit on a kind of Maginot Line of concertina wire hundreds of yards long with orders to let not even one pass.

Early the next morning, the whole ecosystem of what was going on had changed, and with it, possibly how the post-Title 42 face of border security will look like going forward, at least in its primary epicenter of Texas.

There on the 45-degree Texas riverbank, a line of some 50 immigrants, many with babies and small children, stood immobilized in their tracks, from the razor wire at the top of the steep bank all the way down into the water.

At the top, a coterie of Texas state troopers and National Guardsmen, all slung with weaponry, blocked their forward progress.

Some of the uniformed men were arguing with the immigrants at the highest point, while others shouting down to the rest while pointing back at the Matamoros bank, “Go back! Go Back! This is not a port of entry.”

And reinforcing a message that carrying children in this river was “peligroso,” dangerous.

Some who’d made it to the mid- and upper bank began tacking right along the silver coils of razor wire, looking for an alternative opening.

But the soldiers and state cops proved relentless in mirroring their lateral movement.

It didn’t matter how far the immigrants went, the soldiers synced along their side of the wire.

Down in the river, men and women carrying children and personal belongings in plastic bags also began walking waist-deep downstream also looking for an unopposed gap and didn’t find one.

Eventually, the entire group had no choice but to either sleep on the 45-degree steep, weed infested embankment with little food or water and no shelter, or return to Mexico, which is what they all did.
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There is much more about this successful operation of Texas to block the inflow of illegals.  Ironically, Biden and Mayorkas bragged about the end of Title 42 not being as bad as anticipated. 

See. also:

With barbed wire and warnings, migrants stopped at US-Mexico border

After hours of waiting on the U.S. side of the border and hoping the Texas National Guard would let them seek U.S. asylum, a group of 15 migrants crossed a shallow green river back to Mexico, their faces drawn in disappointment.

After traveling from countries including the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, they were among the first people on Saturday attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico after the end of COVID-19 restrictions that had blocked many migrants from requesting asylum at the border for the last three years.

But access to asylum is still restricted.

"Please, go back to Mexico," a Texas soldier told the group just north of a river dividing El Paso, Texas, and Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, beneath a bridge that joins the two countries.

As the migrants trudged up the sandy, trash-strewn riverbank into Mexico, a Guatemalan man said the Texas troops had been clear: "It's not in our interest to be here."
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If Biden would allow the Border Patrol and Federal National Guard to do their job of protecting the border, Texas would not have to intervene. 

And:

'Ha, ha, ha, ha': Laughing Biden claims post-Title 42 is 'much better than you all expected'  - as asylum seekers are released into U.S. and given return court dates TEN YEARS from now

And:

 Newly arrived migrants causing chaos at regional airports

 ...

Regional airports such as Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, said migrants have been staying on site for days while waiting for flights, while a homelessness center inside O’Hare Airport in Chicago has been inundated with migrants flown in from border states.

Thousands of migrants have reportedly passed through the airport in Jacksonville, Florida, while those arriving at Logan Airport in Massachusetts are going on to “overwhelm state resources,” according to a local report.

In El Paso, Texas — the busiest border crossing in the nation — the city shut its airport to the general public a week ago, only allowing ticketed passengers access in order to handle the influx.

At a checkpoint in the airport’s main concourse, travelers are forced to show a boarding pass to prove they are about to fly.

In an effort to keep migrants from loitering at the travel hub, passengers have been told they can only enter four hours prior to their flight.
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