Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is urging residents with land on the U.S.-Mexico border to report personal property damages due to the influx of illegal immigrants to the Division of Emergency Management.
''I strongly encourage Texas landowners along the border to report any personal property damages they incur due to unlawful immigration. By completing the Self Reporting Damage Survey, our state will be equipped with the necessary data to continue addressing the ongoing crisis at our southern border and provide the support our landowners and communities need to stay safe and secure,'' he wrote in a statement on the Office of the Texas Governor website Thursday.
Abbott visited the border with former President Donald Trump on Wednesday and cited ''dramatic'' problems due to President Joe Biden’s new border policies.
"Just this calendar year, Texas DPS [Department of Public Safety] alone has apprehended more fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in the entire state of Texas," Abbott said at a press conference.
"This is not going to be the red-carpet treatment that the Biden administration has rolled out," he added, referring to a plan to arrest people crossing the border.
Trump said the border was better under his administration.
"The border has never been this way. It went from the best border we ever had in the history of our country ... there has never been a border so secure as the southern border that we had," Trump said. "If you don't have a strong border, you do not have a strong country."
The visit comes two weeks after Abbott announced plans to pay for the construction of more border wall with taxpayer money.
El Paso County farmers in May expressed security concerns about the influx of migrants and told lawmakers of the consistent damage to their properties.
However, Gary Joiner, a spokesperson for the Texas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization, told Newsweek, "Agricultural entities in the United States need labor. We're short on our workforce, and a lot of the interested able and willing workers to work in U.S. agriculture do come from foreign soils."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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