Fact check: Bad neighbor? New Mexico governor criticizes Texas for securing her border

(The Center Square) – New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently expressed outrage over “Texas’ latest move” installing barriers in an area where they have been for nearly one year.

A KRQE News report claiming Texas Army National Guard troops were erecting concertina wire fencing along the Rio Grande River near El Paso “on the riverbank that faces not Mexico, but New Mexico west of El Paso.”

A British publication reported, “Which Mexico are you? New Mexico furious after Texas installs razor wire along its border.”

Other news reports appear to have made similar claims.

Texas’ OLS barriers bordering New Mexico aren’t new. They’ve been there since October.

Soldiers have erected barriers through Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star. The area in question is near West Paisano Drive in El Paso, Texas, extending near the Anapra, N.M., bridge, which The Center Square observed last May.

“Texas has been so successful in securing our southern border, migrants are now illegally crossing into New Mexico, and then into Texas,” Gov. Abbott’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris told The Center Square. “To be clear, Texas began installing barriers on the border of New Mexico last October. This barrier has proven to be effective in deterring migrants who illegally crossed into the United States.”

Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, told The Independent, “Abbott’s latest move was a ‘political stunt’ that will have ‘will have no meaningful impact on our nation’s broken immigration system'” and Abbott “seems to be pushing to make Texas its own country without regard for his neighbors.”

She made the claim after Texas Department of Public Safety OLS officers took down a human smuggling ring tied to Mexican cartels, Nuevo Cartel De Juarez and La Linea Cartel, operating out of El Paso County and in Lujan Grisham’s state in Sunland Park. They seized weapons, body armor, and ammunition and arrested alleged human smugglers, The Center Square reported.

The FBI has warned that the region near El Paso is a major human smuggling and kidnapping destination, located across the river from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where rival gangs and cartels are fighting for control of a multi-billion-dollar human and drug smuggling enterprise. The Santa Teresa, NM, CBP station is the busiest in the El Paso CBP sector, The Center Square reported. Texas DPS officers are also catching human smugglers and illegal border crossers after they enter New Mexico and then enter El Paso, OLS officials told The Center Square.

Lujan Grisham is Texas’ only neighbor who refused to respond to Abbott’s call for help to secure Texas’ border at the height of the border crisis.

Her other neighbor, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, was among the first 12 governors to pledge support, The Center Square reported. He’s also been calling for border security measures with Republican governors since September 2021.

In a joint statement, the first dozen governors participating in OLS said, “President Biden has abandoned his constitutional responsibility to secure the border … The illegal flow of criminals, drugs, and contraband moving across our border creates an untenable situation for all states … Republican governors are providing support where Biden failed.”

Stitt deployed Oklahoma National Guard troops to Texas because it was “in the best interest of Oklahoma and the nation to take decisive action to address the federal government’s utter failure to secure our southern border,” he said.

Texas’ other neighbor, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, agrees. One of his first acts after he was elected was to travel to Texas to see how he could help. In February, he asked the Louisiana legislature for their support to participate in OLS and got it, The Center Square reported. Receiving their support, Landry said, “is one of the proudest days I can even ever have imagined to see, all these great men and women here who are dedicated to public safety and to the security not only of the state of Louisiana but of the nation.”

“Texas has always been a great neighbor to us,” Landry continued. “If they’re calling, we should heed that call,” adding that legislative leaders “all agreed that we should do that.”

Louisiana cities were combating crime “we can directly trace to a border that is wide open that is letting the cartel do as they please into this country. Because the federal government will not act, because the president will not do his job … then the states are going to act.”

With the help of partnering states, Texas OLS operations began shutting down illegal border crossings, forcing cartel operations west into New Mexico, Arizona and California, The Center Square first reported.

Since March 2021, OLS officers have apprehended more than 520,600 illegal border crossers, made more than 47,000 criminal arrests, with more than 40,800 felony charges, and seized more than 543 million lethal doses of fentanyl—enough to kill everyone in the United States and Mexico combined, according to the latest data from Abbott’s office.

“Every individual who is apprehended or arrested and every ounce of drugs seized would have otherwise made their way into communities” across America, Abbott argues. “With the support of half of America’s governors, Texas continues to step up and deploy every tool and strategy to stop the unprecedented illegal immigration at our southern border.”