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Washington DC – Following Texas Gov Greg Abbott’s endorsement of Donald Trump, his signing of the state’s new extreme anti-immigrant bill, and Trump’s latest ugly immigration comments in the state, observers are highlighting the stakes and dangers for Texas, immigrant and Latino communities, and the larger nation.
According to Mario Carillo, Campaigns Manager for America’s Voice:
“Governor Abbott and Donald Trump are two anti-immigrant birds of a feather, so it’s fitting that Abbott has endorsed the former president on the same week that Abbott signed the dangerous new Texas anti-immigrant law and Trump’s abhorrent anti-immigrant plan for a second-term became public.
During the last decade, Texas has become the ground zero for some of the most cruel and callous immigration policies, both from the federal and state levels, including family separation, deploying law enforcement volunteered by red state governors to the border, the building of ineffective border barriers, and now a bill that will deputize local law enforcement with the power to detain and deport those they deem to be immigrants. These policies amount to an attack against communities of color in Texas and go against the very values that have made Texas strong and iconic the world over. When the streams of anti-immigrant demagoguery from local hardliners crosses with the stream of national hardliners, nothing good will come of it. Already, candidate Trump is discussing deploying state troopers and National Guard from red states into other states to enforce his desire for mass deportations and vast prison camps. Americans already rejected Trump’s extremism, but we need to continue the job by pushing back on the extremism from leaders in our state as well.”
At the America’s Voice blog, Gabe Ortiz writes, “Texas Gov. Abbott Endorses Trump with Shared Chaotic, Racist, and Intentionally Deadly Approach to Immigration,” noting:
“While the fact that Abbott is endorsing Trump is not at all a surprise, it foreshadows the deeply concerning political and policy agenda the GOP is adopting towards immigration and the border. What’s been happening on immigration from the GOP-controlled Texas government is a prototype for what Trump – as well as his allies at the Heritage Foundation’s anti-democracy Project 2025 – envisions for the entire nation. Both Abbott and Trump have pushed the “invasion” lie, have called for rounding up immigrants and families with deep roots here, and have called for intentionally deadly policies that foment racial profiling, discrimination and violence.
In fact, no other governor in the nation has carried out a more cruel and wildly expensive anti-immigrant agenda than Abbott, proposing or implementing dehumanizing, dangerous, and wasteful policies attacking migrants, including those seeking asylum, without concrete results in reducing border traffic or creating more order or safety. While some states have considered themselves laboratories of democracy, Abbott has turned Texas into a horrifying laboratory experimenting with how far they can push their nativism and the bounds of U.S. law.
…Trump’s alarming immigration plan – and escalating use of dangerous and incendiary rhetoric echoing dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini – should be a flashing red alert, promising assaults on legal immigration, refugees, asylum seekers, the foreign-born and their U.S. citizen children. While Abbott seeks to newly empower state and local officers with purported immigration authorities, Trump seeks this on a national level, reportedly planning to enlist “federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states” to aid with ICE raids, The New York Times reported.”
Two recent in-state opinion pieces highlight the dangers and larger implications posed by the new Texas anti-immigrant bill. In a Austin American Statesman op-ed, immigration attorney Juan Gonzalez asks, “Immigrants contribute and embody the Texas spirit. So why does the GOP vilify them?” while El Paso county commissioner David Stout writes for El Paso Matters that the new state law “is the worst example yet of the Texas Legislature wasting public money and time on its venal political campaign against migrants.”