Opinion: Abbott’s policies improved the border. Harris wants the credit.

Guess where Vice President Kamala Harris decided to show up Friday for the first time in three years? At the southern border.
While on the Arizona-Mexico border, Harris criticized former President Donald Trump for blocking a bipartisan border bill.
Her gaslighting knows no bounds.
Harris’ spin about the border is just that − spin. She and President Joe Biden have failed to secure our nation’s southern border, plain and simple. Unlike a lot of issues, this one is not complicated − four more years of Harris will be four more years of the same border chaos.
The same day that Harris was in Arizona, I interviewed Gov. Greg Abbott at the Texas Governor’s Mansion in Austin. I asked him about how the state approaches security along its 1,254-mile border with Mexico.
After almost a decade as the Lone Star state’s chief executive, the three-term governor has seen a lot when it comes to the Texas border, including an enormous increase in the number of illegal border crossings after the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021.
The influx increased in no small part because Biden and Harris reversed Trump policies such as “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42, which helped maintain order and keep migrant crossings relatively low. The number of illegal crossings at the border then surged to a record high, with nearly 250,000 migrant encounters last December.
Abbott had to act. He’s building a border wall, erected razor and concertina wire as a deterrent and floated buoys in the Rio Grande to keep migrants from swimming across and in some cases drowning in the river.
In December, after the record for migrant encounters, Abbott called in the National Guard to regain control.
This year, the number of illegal crossings into Texas has declined substantially, and the governor said his policies, not the Biden administration’s, is the primary reason why.
“If you look from Brownsville to El Paso, illegal crossings have gone down,” Abbott told me. “And the Biden administration seems to want to take credit for it.”
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He is frustrated that Harris visited the border weeks before the election after failing to do so little about illegal immigration since 2021.
“Americans (can) see through Kamala Harris’ position like they’re looking through glass,” Abbott said. “It was her responsibility … and she failed miserably.”
A common refrain among Democrats is that migrant crime is something Republicans exaggerate as a scare tactic. But Abbott’s experience and recent arrests suggest there is truth in claims that some migrants come to the United States to commit crimes.
Last week, the governor’s office issued a $5,000 reward for information on members of a dangerous Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua. Abbott said the gang has “spread terror and carnage in every country they’ve been in,” and he vowed they won’t gain a foothold in Texas. Two alleged members of the gang were arrested Sept. 19 in San Antonio.
I have interviewed migrants at the border who told me they came to the United States in hopes of a better life. But the governor said that is not the case for all migrants.
Tren de Aragua is “coming here to (inflect) carnage, mayhem and murder, and there’s nothing that Biden and Harris have done to stop it,” Abbott said.
Newly released statistics back up his concerns about public safety.
In a letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, officials at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detailed crime statistics involving noncitizens on ICE’s docket. Of the more than 7 million migrants released by ICE over the past four decades while their immigration cases are being processed, more than 435,000 had criminal convictions and about 227,000 had criminal charges pending.
Of those, more than 13,000 had been convicted of homicide and nearly 16,000 of sexual assault.
“Despite the challenges of working within a broken immigration system, and in the face of an enormous workload and consistently limited funding, (the Department of Homeland Security) continues to enforce the law to secure our borders,” the letter read.
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The vice president hopes voters will have only a short-term memory about illegal immigration. She has not taken responsibility for her failure to secure the border throughout most of the Biden-Harris administration’s time in office, but she does want credit for the recent decrease in migrant crossings, even though much of that decline is thanks to the governor’s resolve and the hard work of state and federal law enforcement.
“Even though Texas has gained some level of operational control of our border, the opposite is true in New Mexico, Arizona and California,” Abbott said. “The border is not just the Texas border. It’s an entire border. And until we have a president who will secure every square mile of that border, from Brownsville all the way to San Diego, we’re going to have massive problems in the United States of America.”
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.