Governor Gets Publicity Bonanza at Border
with Big Economy Losses and No Cartel Pain
Capitol Inside
April 18, 2022
Texas Department of Public Safety Colonel Steve McCraw suggested late last week that Governor Greg Abbott had found a way to eliminate human and drug trafficking over bridges that link the state to Mexico with expansive safety inspections of every commercial vehicle that crosses them. Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the Abbott blockade as a genius move. A steady stream of Fox News guests praised the Texas governor for doing more to secure the southern border than anyone.
"Not surprisingly - there is actually no human trafficking and/or drug trafficking that we've been able to detect since we've done 100% compliant investigations," McCraw said at a news conference on Thursday in response to a question that was aimed at Abbott. "In fact, it was an expectation recognizing the cartels know what they're doing."
The DPS chief neglected to mention was that the state police didn't have the legal authority to search the cargo areas of trucks where migrants and drugs would be if they were being smuggled into the state from Mexico. That means that record numbers of immigrants and illegal narcotics could have been trucked into Texas for a full week unbeknownst to Abbott and the DPS if the drug cartels in northern Mexico have leaders and lawyers who are capable of anticipating what the governor will do just as well or more so.
Neither Abbott or McCraw have expressed concerns publicly about the potential for a violent retaliation in the Lone Star State by cartels that have become more brazen, aggressive and willing to take high risks than they'd been in the past as a result of fighting among rival factions from Matamoros to Ciudad Juarez. That would be business as usual for the drug lords who've effectively taken over northern Mexico by buying off federal, state and local officials or killing them as a message to others who get in their way.
The Republican governor's border theatrics have had dramatic effects nonetheless despite a lack of evidence to show that they've put a dent in the human and drug smuggling trades on either side of the river. Here's a sample of Abbott's accomplishments by holding traffic at the border hostage for more than a week as a way to protest President Joe Biden's plan to repeal the Title 42 expulsion policy in May.
Publicity - The Texas governor has tried to make a massive splash at every turn in the past year from a criminal investigation into public school pornography to the resurrection of Donald Trump's border wall. Operation Lone Star has been Abbott's signature re-election campaign issue as a law enforcement mission that features the DPS and 10,000 Texas National Guard member who he's deployed to the Rio Grande in a war against illegal immigration and drugs.
Abbott announced the safety checks of trucks at Texas border ports on the same day last week that he revealed a plan to send migrants to Washington D.C. on buses and planes to keep them from wrecking havoc here. Abbott said in an email on Monday that the fifth bus with migrants from Texas arrived near the U.S. Capitol this morning at a location by the Fox News headquarters in D.C.
Economy - The prominent Texas economist Ray Perryman estimated last week that the week-long border truck inspections were costing the state's economy $470 million a day. With the DPS safety checks in full force for a week, that would add up to more than $3.3 billion in total economic losses in Texas. The Abbott safety crackdown drained about $7 billion from the U.S. economy based on Perryman's calculations.
Democrat Beto O'Rourke has been tweeting about the Perryman findings with glee in his bid to oust Abbott in the November general election.
Abbott has seen the disruptions to trade and commerce as collateral damage for the harm that he think he's inflicted on the cartels with nothing tangible to back up the DPS boss analysis. Abbott has been chastised by major business interests, Democrats and Republicans alike for the truck stop maneuvering.
The border backlog gave Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller a hero's stage that he used to excoriate the governor for moves that hurt the food production industry as much or more than most segments of private industry. Abbott countered the criticism by saying that Miller didn't know what he'd been talking about.
Drug Cartels - The Texas border truck stoppage has driven up the price of their product while taking a serious bite of the state and national economy and doing nothing to reduce the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.
The cartels have been more discreet in the U.S. for the simple sake of maximizing profits that have soared whenever the risk of transporting them goes up like McCraw said it had during the truck stops that Abbott cancelled with written agreements from Mexico border state governors late last week.
Abbott's deals with the leaders of Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas are unenforceable and meaningless as a result. But they gave the cartels a pass to get business back to usual without the hassles and headaches that the truck inspections posed. The state border blockage's effect on the number of migrants or number and drugs that enter Texas from the south probably will be negligible at best.
But McCraw thinks the drug cartels backed down when the state showed its might. "They don’t like troopers stopping them, certainly north of the border, and they certainly don’t like 100 percent inspections of commercial vehicles on the bridges,” McCraw said. "And once that started, we’ve seen a decreased amount of trafficking across bridges. Common sense.”
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