Gov. Cox to visit southern border in solidarity with Texas governor
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Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced he will tour the southern border this weekend with 14 other Republican governors, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who declared that record levels of migrant crossings constituted an “invasion” last week.
Cox has consistently stood behind Abbott’s efforts to implement border security measures, including mobilizing the Texas National Guard, in response to what Cox called “President Joe Biden’s open border policies,” in a press release.
Cox will join Abbott, as well the governors of Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Tennessee, in meeting with Texas law enforcement officials for a press conference on Sunday afternoon in Eagle Pass, Texas.
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On Jan. 24, Abbott issued a statement outlining ways the Biden administration had “broken the compact between the United States and the States.” Abbott accused Biden of failing to enforce immigration laws passed by Congress, releasing immigrants who entered the country illegally into the country in large numbers and compromising Texas’ “border security infrastructure.”
Citing Article I and Article IV of the Constitution, Abbott asserted that absent federal enforcement of the law, states are granted authority to secure the nation’s border and announced that Texas law enforcement had been dispatched to do just that.
Coming just two days after the Supreme Court ruled that federal officials could cut razor wire installed by Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border, Abbott’s statement sparked a constitutional standoff between Texas and the federal government, with Biden threatening to nationalize the Texas National Guard if Abbott does not back down.
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Cox was one of 24 governors to sign a joint statement last week “in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.”
“The border is a disaster that continues to spiral out of control, both in terms of people and deadly fentanyl traffic,” Cox said in a social media post on Jan. 24. “This is a national security issue. This is a common sense issue. This is an American issue.”
He continued: “Utah thanks Texas and Gov. Abbott for stepping up where the Biden Administration has failed over and over again.”
The last few years have seen migrant encounters with U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the U.S.-Mexico border skyrocket to levels never seen in American history.
December saw the greatest number of border encounters ever recorded, with the total exceeding 300,000 migrants apprehended and processed by Border Patrol agents in a single month, according to multiple media reports — surpassing September’s high of 270,000.
These totals come after fiscal year 2022 and 2023 recorded the greatest surges in border crossings since the country began keeping track.
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The southern border’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, has seen the number of migrants processed in a single day repeatedly reach 4,000, CBS News reported.
These totals do not include “gotaways,” the number of migrants who evade Border Patrol agents. In his Jan. 24 statement, Abbott estimated that more than 6 million undocumented immigrants had crossed the southern border since Biden entered office.
Reps. Burgess Owens, of Utah’s 4th Congressional District, and Celeste Maloy, of Utah’s 2nd, visited Eagle Pass at the beginning of January.
Rep. John Curtis, who represents the state’s 3rd District and is running for U.S. Senate, announced on Thursday he will attend a congressional field hearing in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and tour the southern border next week.
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