Texas has taken yet another step in its ongoing war to protect its southern border with Mexico, in lieu of the Biden administration doing anything at all to help them.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott announced last week that soldiers with the National Guard are currently undergoing training so they can operate airboats. Using this new technology will help to further the state’s border protection efforts.
As Abbott posted a photo of the training on the social media platform X on Saturday, accompanying it with the text:
“Texas National Guard soldiers undergo training to effectively operate and maintain airboats supporting Operation Lone Star along the Texas-Mexico border. Texas continues to use every tool and strategy to secure the border.”
Airboats are watercrafts that have flat bottoms and are propelled by a propeller that’s similar to that on an aircraft. It also will typically have either a car engine or an aircraft engine that powers it.
Abbott and the Biden administration have been at odds for much of the time that President Joe Biden has been in the White House. The general point of contention is immigration, and how Abbott believes the Biden administration hasn’t done anything to curb border crossings from Mexico into Texas by illegal immigrants.
Last year, Abbott finally created what he calls Operation Lone Star, a multi-billion-dollar border mission that seeks to curtail the many problems that illegal immigration has caused his state.
That has included placing razor wire fencing along parts of the state’s southern border with Mexico, and also placing a floating barrier in the Rio Grande to serve as a deterrent for would-be border crossers.
Early this year, Texas took control of Shelby Park, an area on the riverfront in the border city of Eagle Pass, where it then installed many miles of razor wire fencing. The state started to deny access to the area to agents of the U.S. Border Patrol agency, which only escalated its ongoing feud with the Biden administration regarding immigration enforcement.
The Department of Justice has argued that the wire fencing impedes the ability of the federal government to effectively patrol the southern border and get aid to any migrants who might need help.
After suing Texas, the federal government won a ruling from the Supreme Court that allowed agents with Border Patrol to start to remove that fencing.
Abbott has stayed defiant even after that ruling, though, saying multiple times that Texas has a “constitutional right to self-defense,” adding that his state would soon put additional razor wire fencing along its border with Mexico.
Another new Texas law that would’ve allowed law enforcement agents in the state to detain anyone they suspected of entering Texas illegally has also been temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court.
That issue is likely to make its way through the court system and probably arrive in front of the high court eventually, too.
Abbott continues to make sure that illegal immigration remains in the national spotlight, even as the Biden administration and Democrats as a whole would like to boost up the efforts the White House has taken on that issue.
