Republican Donald Trump secured the endorsement of Texas Governor Greg Abbott at an event near the US-Mexico border on Sunday, a location intended to highlight the former US president’s plans to curb immigration if he is will win the 2024 election.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden next year, traveled to Edinburg, Texas, with Abbott to visit Texas National Guard soldiers, the Texas Department of Public Safety and other service members parked there.
Abbott said Biden’s border policies are endangering communities across the United States. He credited Trump with reducing border crossings to their lowest point in decades during his presidency.
“I’m here to tell you there is no way, no way America can continue under the leadership of Joe Biden as our president. We need a president who will secure the border,” Abbott said.
Trump said he was honored by Abbott’s endorsement.
“This is very important to me,” Trump said. “You don’t have to worry about the border, governor … you don’t have to worry about the border in Texas or Arizona or anywhere else.”
Since Biden took office in 2021, US border agents have made more than 5 million arrests of migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border irregularly – not through a controlled border station. Immigrants came from all over the world; Many of them fled the economic and political turmoil in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Trump has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected next year. His plan includes a promise to roll back his 2019 “remain in Mexico” program, which forces non-Mexican asylum seekers hoping to enter the United States at the Mexican border to wait in Mexico for resolution of their cases.
The program was canceled by Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020, promising more humane and orderly immigration policies. But it has struggled with record levels of immigrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border.
Abbott has become a leading Republican figure on border issues by mounting his own border security initiative Operation Lone Star, a controversial plan to stop immigration that has pitted his state against in the Biden administration.
