Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appeared on right-wing gun fetishist Dana Loesch’s “The Dana Show,” recently to talk about his inhumane border policies.
When Loesch asked about the “maximum amount of pressure” he could apply in his border policy, Abbott responded, “We are using every tool that can be used from building a border wall to building these border barriers” to passing a law that makes it illegal for undocumented immigrants to enter the state. Abbott did note that the latter move was now the subject of a federal lawsuit from the Biden administration questioning a state’s right to make up immigration law.
Then the Texas governor added, “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
Abbott fails to point why the Biden administration would do this: Shooting unarmed people just because you are unhappy about their presence is murder. But while Abbott is pretending the federal government is letting stupid murder laws get in the way, it actually remains to be seen if shooting at migrants in Texas will result in federal or state charges of any kind.
Abbott has done everything in his power to play to the xenophobia that’s so popular among Republicans. He has championed state policies that treat migrants and asylum-seekers in the most inhumane and money-wasting ways imaginable, including bussing people to other states, through dangerous storms, to score political points.
Critics say Abbott’s hysterical rhetoric concerning immigrants and the border has inflamed violence against nonviolent migrants. It isn’t hard to see why Abbott is derided. After all, he did nothing when 19 young Texas children and two adults were gunned down by a AR-15-wielding dirtbag, and now he’s moaning about not being able to shoot unarmed folks wading across rivers and over rough terrain in search of a better life.
