Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott is going to do things his own way, as he always does.
This week, he sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, informing them that he intends to defy the White House’s orders to remove the barriers the state built on an island that has recently become a breeding ground for drug cartels from Mexico.
In the letter, Abbott wrote that the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission notified the Texas General Land Office that they had to restore what’s known as Fronton Island to “pre-construction conditions.”
The island is on the Rio Grande, right on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. It’s about 170 acres in size, and has seen significant cartel activity, as it’s been used for illegal immigration, and there has been a lot of violence there, too.
As Abbott wrote in his letter:
“For years, the cartels were ‘running rampant’ in Fronton Island’s ‘thick vegetation’ and ‘bullet-pocketed structures’ along the river to stage illegal entries, surveil state and federal law enforcement, stash weapons, plant explosives, evade apprehension, and engage in open warfare against rival cartels and against state and federal officers.”
Abbott then recounted one particular incident in which authorities discovered 20 ammunition magazines for weapons of different sizes, three packages of C-4 plastic explosives, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher and six assault rifles.
Another investigation discovered that an explosive device was buried near a stack of weapons and ammunition, the governor continued.
Recently, local authorities gave permission to Texas Rangers and the state Department of Public Safety to police and patrol the island. Dawn Buckingham, the land commissioner in Texas, spoke about what they found on the island in a previous interview with Fox News Digital.
She said:
“Law enforcement has found some ammunition, suspicious devices on it. And we just feel like with the border crisis, it was really important to ensure that Texas law enforcement have access to these islands so we can help secure our border.”
From about the time the Biden administration took office, Abbott began to take matters into his own hand in regard to illegal immigration and trying to stop the cartels.
He created Operation Lone Star in 2021, which was an effort the state undertook to be aggressive to stop the free flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into Texas.
Some of the efforts the state has undertaken have included setting up floating barriers in the Rio Grande as well as razor wire fencing in the areas around it. The goal of this was to make it more challenging for people to cross from Mexico into Texas.
The Biden administration, though, has fought back, saying that only the federal government has the right to make decisions on immigration issues. They’ve ordered Texas to take down the barriers they installed and want them to do the same on the island.
