Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by MELISSA DEL BOSQUE from The Border Chronicle on February 13, 2024. It was accessed through an electronic newsletter.
It’s no accident that Texas is at the very center of the “invasion” campaign strategy.
There was a time when Texas governor Greg Abbott was considered weak tea by the MAGA crowd. Steve Bannon, chief propaganda minister for the authoritarian movement, referred to Abbott in 2022 as part of the “gutless Republican establishment shuffle.” This was because Abbott was busing migrants to Democratic-led cities rather than frog-marching them at gunpoint back into Mexico.
Bannon and other former Trump cabinet members have been pushing the invasion narrative as a campaign strategy with the backing of wealthy donor-funded MAGA thinks tanks. The premise is that black and brown migrants are invading the southern border, aiming to replace white Americans in a devilish plot cooked up by President Biden and Democrats. It’s ridiculous on its face, but after nearly four years of ceaseless rotation in political speeches and right-wing media, a segment of U.S. society believes it.
Since 2020, Ken Cuccinelli, former acting DHS secretary under Trump, has repeatedly pushed the idea to elected officials, including Abbott, that the U.S. Constitution allows states to declare migrant arrivals at the border an “invasion,” one that would allow them to deploy armed soldiers to “push them back across the border.” And he and others have lobbied Republican governors to form an interstate compact, sending their combined police and National Guard troops to Texas. Over the years, courts have consistently rejected Cuccinelli’s premise.
As the presidential election looms, and ambitious politicians jockey to become the VP pick for Trump, Abbott is increasingly hewing to the MAGA crowd’s blood-soaked authoritarian rhetoric. In early January he complainedon a right-wing radio show, helmed by a former NRA spokesperson, that “the only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.” He’s also turned his state’s border—especially Eagle Pass’s Shelby Park—into a gun-bristling movie set for Bannon’s MAGA invasion fever dream. And he’s put a target on the backs of South Texans and asylum seekers.
“I can’t believe I have to say ‘murdering people is unacceptable.’ @GregAbbott_TX. It’s language like yours that left 23 people dead and 22 others injured in El Paso,” wrote U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar in a tweet after Abbott’s comments were aired. Escobar was referring to the 2019 massacre in her hometown perpetrated by a white gunman who cited a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” for targeting and killing Latinos.
By stoking militant action against the federal government in Eagle Pass, Abbott is endangering the small town’s residents. On February 4, Abbott and 13 other Republican governors arrived in Eagle Pass on the heels of a “Take Back Our Border Convoy,” which also billed itself as “God’s Army”—a chaotic circus of QAnon believers, Christian nationalists, Jan. 6 insurrectionists, white supremacists, and bedazzled red, white, and blue MAGA grifters. Organized by many of the same elements who staged an attempted coup on January 6, 2021, for Trump, convoys also rallied in San Ysidro, California, and in Yuma, Arizona. Some border residents took to calling it “insurrection on the border.
Amerika Garcia Grewal, an Eagle Pass resident, was among the counterprotesters to the convoy. “This was the first time that I ever felt unsafe downtown,” she said. “People were coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, there’s people packing heat, these outsiders on our streets. What do we do?’”
Convoy participants waving Trump flags turned the main street of Eagle Pass into a chaotic mess, yelling “United States!” and “Trump for president!” and holding “WTF-America?” signs on one side of the street, while Garcia Grewal and other residents carried “Faith is not hate” signs on the other. City police put out traffic cones and tried to keep the convoy traffic from overwhelming downtown. More pandemonium broke out in nearby Quemado.
Abbott and the governors, who had arrived on private jets, did not have to contend with the Army of God circus. They were safe behind a cyclone fence guarded by soldiers at Shelby Park, which straddles the Rio Grande. Abbott had fenced off the park two weeks earlier in his theatrical “standoff” with Biden and the federal government, purportedly over immigration.
The group of governors gave their press conference safely ensconced within the park and surrounded by National Guard soldiers and Humvees as a backdrop for their nearly 30-minute press conference in front of reporters. Neither Eagle Pass residents nor city leaders were at the event. It was particularly ironic when Tennessee governor Bill Lee commented that “Abbott has done everything in his power to provide safety and security for Texans.” This was as FBI agents were closing in on a man who planned to launch an armed attack in Eagle Pass with other militia members to “stop an invasion.” According to the FBI complaint after his arrest on February 5, Nashville resident Paul Faye planned to “kill migrants” and said his talent was “sending rounds down range.”
The arrival of Governor Lee in Eagle Pass, who was recently appointed chair of the Republican Governors Association, shows how Trump’s extremist MAGA movement has hijacked the GOP. Lee and others pledged to send more troops to Texas. “This experiment in an open border policy has catastrophically failed America,” Lee said in Eagle Pass.
These elected officials have no intention to solve problems, as we can see from the MAGA crowd’s sabotage of bipartisan immigration legislation in Congress and Abbott’s decision not to coordinate with other states on migrant busing and his barring of federal border agents from Shelby Park. Rather, these leaders want to sow chaos and score political points at the expense, and sometimes lives, of border residents and migrants
It’s no accident that Texas is at the very center of the “invasion” campaign strategy. West Texas oil billionaires continue to bankroll the chaos and xenophobic rhetoric. As The Border Chronicle reported last week, the fossil fuel industry accelerates climate change, which spurs more mass migration. For many years, West Texas oil billionaires, including Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, have invested millions in turning the Texas GOP into an ultra-right-wing party. And they are top funders for Attorney General Ken Paxton, Abbott, and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. A former conservative radio talk show host, Patrick is especially calculated and vicious in his commentary. The Wilks brothers have also pumped millions into right-wing media, which denies climate change and normalizes the xenophobic invasion rhetoric.
All the while, a massive transfer of taxpayer dollars is enriching private contractors. Abbott and the Texas Legislature are spending more than $10 billion on Operation Lone Star, with nothing to show in terms of reducing the number of asylum seekers at the border, while lining the pockets of corporations. One such company, Gotham, a Texas-based disaster recovery firm, flew Tennessee’s Gov. Lee to Eagle Pass on a private jet for the press conference at Shelby Park. The company has tens of millions in Operation Lone Star contracts and has contributed millions to Governor Abbott.
“It feels like we are being used and then discarded, like, we’re left with this complete mess here,” said Garcia Grewal. She and other residents who have been outspoken about Abbott’s takeover of their park, are now having to invest in digital and physical security measures. During the convoy weekend, a person showed up at the home of Jesse Fuentes, another protester against Abbott’s takeover. No threats were made, but it was a reminder of how they could be easily targeted, she said, as the continued MAGA focus on Eagle Pass draws armed militias and others to their small town. “The Eagle Pass School district had to cancel school events and invest in extra patrols of their facilities, because there was talk that the United Patriot Party would be meeting at the high school,” she said. “This is what we’re dealing with now.”
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