Saturday, April 09, 2022

Run For The Border

Time was the Texas Governor's position was a sinecure more than a real job. The Texas Governor was the only statewide elected official who lived in Austin (the Governor's Mansion) year-round.  The Lege only meets for 6 months every two years, and the real job of the Lite Guv (a/k/a Lt. Gov.) is to preside over the Senate.  Well, when it isn't in session, the Lite Guv has f*ck-all to do.  The Governor can't do much during sessions except veto or sign bills (most of which he does after the session is over), or call special sessions (which nobody likes.  They cost $$$.). The Governor can't even pardon people.  (Abbott made some noises about pardoning people recently, as if he were the POTUS.  Since the late 19th century, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles alone can issue pardons.  The Governor can issue a stay of execution in a death penalty case; that's only good for 30 days.  Only the Board can commute a prison sentence.).  I remember an infamous Texas Monthly article from my youth, about then governor Dolph Briscoe (IIRC), a nice guy from West Texas who was a complete cipher, elected to office because he was a good Democratic party member (ah, dem was de days!).  The article featured a picture of the Governor in his Governor's chair (a plush office chair decked in brown leather with the state seal embossed in gold on the seat back cushion).  Successive photos of the same pose showed him vanishing before your eyes. 

You get the point.  Nobody minded, though.  Governors weren't expected to do anything.  Why do you think the Lege still only meets for 6 months every two years?  "That government governs best which governs least," and all that.

But Greg Abbott is running for re-election, and he needs all the outrage he can get to keep Beto from nipping at his heels.  So he's going to close the border by inspecting every truck that crosses from Mexico.
Sure he is.

But it is unclear how the directive will work. Federal authorities already inspect commercial trucks as they pass the ports of entry and state troopers would have no authority in federal jurisdictions. Troopers could do further inspections after the trucks get past the federal points, as they have done in the past and continue to do in some areas like Laredo. But increased inspections there could lead to substantial delays in the flow of northbound traffic.

DPS Director Steve McCraw said Wednesday the inspections wouldn’t be done on federal property or international bridges but that drivers would get plenty of warning that they would have to stop for an inspection.

So somewhere in the border cities of Texas, or on the highways leading into Texas from the border, Greg Abbott is going to direct DPS to create massive, week long traffic jams. No, I'm not exaggerating.  Look at that picture above, and then consider this:

“The governor underestimates how long it takes to inspect a single truck,” said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute at Rice University.

Doing a full inspection of a truck could take hours to unload and reload, he said. And with thousands of trucks crossing the border every day, that could lead to significant delays in the movement of goods and commodities.

“You will affect many of these trucks and truck companies that expect to get their goods to a certain point at a certain time and in certain conditions,” Payan said. “That cannot but add to the already difficult conditions businesses are already operating in due to the pandemic. It’s certainly not going to make things better — it’s only going to make things worse.”

Making things worse is not only NOT what the Texas economy needs, it's not what the border economy needs, either.  Abbott is going to turn Laredo and McAllen and all the other border crossings into Ottawas, except the trucks will be stuck there because of, not in spite of, government action.  The news recently has been all about how the border counties which were staunchly Democratic (and frankly, taken for granted by the feckless Democratic party in Texas) are turning red.  Abbott may single-handedly stop that turn, for this election cycle, anyway.

It's not like he's doing any better with his other border initiative, the one he's not talking as much about but is actually pursuing: 

For the past year, thousands of Texas National Guard members and state troopers have been sweeping through brush along the Rio Grande and cruising border-town roadways. Their eyes scan the horizon for the cartel operatives and smugglers whom Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to hold at bay when he launched his multibillion-dollar campaign to secure the border. 

But more often, the troopers arrest men like Bartolo, a Mexican farmworker who came to the United States looking for work, according to his lawyers. They’ve also slapped cuffs on asylum-seekers like Gastón, a human rights attorney who said he fled Venezuela after being targeted by the Maduro regime for defending political opponents.

Though they don’t fit the specter of the hardened criminals that Abbott conjured when launching his border security initiative, men like Bartolo and Gastón are typical of the thousands arrested under Operation Lone Star, which is intended to combat drug and human smuggling.

In July, four months after the operation started, Abbott announced that, with the permission of landowners, the state for the first time would punish people suspected of illegally crossing the border by arresting them on suspicion of trespassing on private property. The unprecedented “catch-and-jail” system allowed the Republican governor to skirt constitutional restrictions that bar states from enforcing federal immigration law.

The misdemeanor charges quickly became a major piece of the governor’s border security crackdown. While Abbott has publicly focused on arrests of people accused of violence and drug trafficking, an investigation by The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and The Marshall Project found for the first time that trespassing cases represented the largest share of the operation’s arrests.

And of course we're in the land of "They said/he lied":

There is also little evidence that trespassing arrests have lowered the levels of illegal crossings, which remain at record highs along the southern U.S. border, including in the regions heavily targeted by the operation. The governor’s office, however, claims his approach deters potential caravans of people seeking entry to the U.S., and he measures success in arrests and drugs seized.

“Arrests and prosecutions both increase public safety and act as a deterrent to other potential law breakers,” Nan Tolson, an Abbott spokesperson, said in a statement. 

Which is back to the "Lock 'em up!" chant that both sides literally use.  You see why I don't favor that kind of "punishment = deterrence" language? Punishment doesn't deter so much as it harms the one doling out the punishment as much if not more than the person punished.  Is the problem in America seriously that we don't have enough people behind bars?

Chris Olivarez, a DPS lieutenant, said on Twitter last month that the county “continues to see an uptick in illegal immigrants trespassing on private ranches.” Abbott’s office said the mass trespassing arrests secure the border and protect local communities, even though they may not slow immigration. DPS did not respond to questions about the initiative’s effectiveness.

Hill, who hoped the arrest tactic was working when he began seeing fewer people he suspects had just crossed the border on his property at the end of last year, was disillusioned when activity picked up again shortly thereafter.

“I was thinking that Operation Lone Star in general had been slowing some of the traffic, but I think at this point it just seems a perpetual game of cat-and-mouse,” he said last month. 

Obviously not.

Yeah, people on the border are noticing.

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