Texas Conservatives Ramp Up Migration Row as El Paso Mayor Denies White House Pressure

The headline was startling. On Tuesday, the New York Post ran a front-page print story titled “Tex Mess,” claiming that President Joe Biden’s administration had strong-armed El Paso officials into not declaring a “state of emergency” over migrant arrivals.

The story, which cited an anonymous official, quickly spread among Texas Republicans from the state’s governor on downward. The problem? When asked if the claims were true, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said, “Absolutely not.”

After the story broke, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly shared the article on Twitter, writing: “White House urged El Paso officials not to declare a state of emergency over the city’s migrant crisis.”

The state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, similarly took to Twitter to share the New York Post story, claiming that Biden had “created this crisis on our border intentionally,” adding: “Turns out his team intentionally tried to cover it up as well.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz jumped into the fray, arguing that the White House is “trying to cover up the crisis they created and have ignored for nearly two years.”

When Fox News interviewed Mayor Leeser Wednesday, he dismissed the claims wholesale, saying the city intends to “continue to work with our federal government.”

Late last month, Leeser said during a City Council meeting that the White House had asked El Paso not to declare a state of emergency, though he never said the federal government pressured the city.

The drummed-up row between Texas officials and the Biden administration is the latest series of conflicting claims about the border.

Since Biden took office in January 2021, Texas Republicans have accused his administration of “open-border policies,” with Gov. Abbott launching the controversial border clampdown Operation Lone Star in March last year.

Today’s cover: Biden admin pressured Dem El Paso mayor not to declare state of emergency over city’s migrant crisis https://t.co/xlkqPA4RGL pic.twitter.com/AzTlaPvorN

— New York Post (@nypost) October 18, 2022

As the midterm elections near, many conservative Texas officials and lawmakers have escalated anti-migrant rhetoric and have placed the border at the center of their campaign efforts.

On Thursday, Paxton’s office announced that the attorney general had filed a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in an ongoing legal battle between Texas and Louisiana on one side and the federal government on the other.

That court case revolves around Texas and Louisiana’s claims that the Biden administration is “letting thousands of deportable criminal aliens walk freely in communities across America,” according to a press release by Paxton’s office.

Since its inception, Operation Lone Star has seen thousands of Texas Department of Public Safety officers and National Guard troops sent to the southern border with Mexico. The operation includes arrests, the return of migrants to federal authorities and the busing of thousands to cities including Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Abbott has defended the operation against growing criticism. During a debate with Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke late last month, the governor insisted that border communities “needed relief, and busing was one of the ways that provided them relief.”

Abbott also claimed O’Rourke would “perpetuate” Biden’s “open-border policies,” a charge O’Rourke denied.

“No one is for open borders, not the least of us who actually live on the borders,” O’Rourke said during the debate.

On Wednesday, Abbott renewed a border security disaster declaration he first introduced in May 2021. El Paso County wasn’t among the counties included in the declaration.

This week, the governor has shared a series of campaign ads including video endorsements by county sheriffs. In one video, Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon said he backed Abbott because “he took the bull by the horns” to crack down on migration.

In another video, Zapata County Sheriff Ray Del Bosque said Abbott had earned his endorsement by “stepping up and helping us Texas sheriffs secure our border.”

During the first 11 months of the 2022 fiscal year, which ended in September, federal authorities documented more than 2.1 million migrant apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border, a sharp uptick when compared with the previous fiscal year. Numbers for September are not yet available.