President Joe Biden's policy of stopping the immediate deportation of unaccompanied minors crossing the border "is enriching the cartels, smugglers and human traffickers," according to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Attorney General Ken Paxton told "The Faulkner Focus" that he believes the "open borders" policy will lead to the "spread of COVID-19, human trafficking, increase in drug trafficking, increase of crime and just general chaos."
The surge at the border is almost entirely made up of unaccompanied children. The Biden administration's policy change allows unaccompanied minors to remain and apply for asylum, but families and adults are being immediately deported under the existing pandemic-related health order Title 42.
As of March 14, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents were holding more than 13,000 unaccompanied children in custody, according to multiple reports. This is an increase from 3,200 migrant children a week previously.
Most of the children are from Central America and were already at the border. Some families are likely sending their teenage children alone so that they will have a chance to stay in the U.S., experts believe.
Abbott is asking the Biden administration to allow state Department of Public Safety (DPS) agents and Texas Rangers access to a large facility in Dallas and other federally managed sites to conduct interviews with unaccompanied minors "to identify victims of human trafficking."
"President Biden’s reckless open border policies have created a humanitarian crisis that is enriching the cartels, smugglers, and human traffickers who often prey on and abuse unaccompanied minors,” Abbott said in a release. “Americans deserve to know what the Biden administration is doing to investigate the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the border and to protect those who are victims of human trafficking."
"This will help us gain information to keep these children safe, root out human trafficking or other criminal activity, and prevent more children from being trafficked and abused," the governor added.
The Texas-based Coalition to Combat Human Trafficking says on its website that, "Human trafficking is not the same as human smuggling. 'Trafficking' is based on exploitation and does not require movement across borders. 'Smuggling' is based on movement and involves moving a person across a border, with that person’s consent, in violation of immigration laws. Although human smuggling differs fundamentally from human trafficking, smuggling can turn into trafficking if the smuggler uses force, fraud, or coercion to control people against their will for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation."
The children at the border currently are in federal custody and care. Last week it was reported 3,000 were kept in camps for more than 72 hours, the legal limit after which they are meant to be transferred to the custody of health officials in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
"They adopted this policy of open borders and they’re sticking with it despite the consequences of the spread of COVID, human trafficking, increase in drug trafficking, increase of crime and just general chaos," Paxton said on "The Faulkner Focus." "You've got all of these kids that are caged up that shouldn’t be here."
