Lifting Title 42 will cause ‘total chaos’ on the border: Greg Abbott

The lifting of the COVID-era Title 42 this week will cause “total chaos” on the southern border where cities are already overwhelmed by the massive influx of migrants anticipating the end of the health policy, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said.

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid from Republican-led states to suspend a lower court’s ruling in November that will allow the program that has been used to eject thousands of migrants to expire on Wednesday.

​”If the courts do not intervene and put a halt to the removal of Title 42, it’s ​going to be total chaos,” Abbott told ABC​ News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an interview out Sunday.

Former President Donald Trump instituted Title 42 in the early months of the pandemic to restrict immigrants who may have been infected with the coronavirus from coming into the US.

Under Title 42, law enforcement federal officials have removed 2.5 million migrants apprehended at the border, according to government statistics. 

Texas was one of the states asking the courts to keep the policy in place.

Raddatz asked Abbott why Texas and the other states sought to keep Title 42 in effect, saying it deals with a public health risk, not immigration policy. 

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“​W​hether it’s COVID​ ​or some other issue, when you have people coming in from across the globe without knowing at all what their health status is​, that almost by definition is a public health risk. There’s every reason to keep that in place​,” Abbott replied.

The lifting of the policy will result in more than 6,000 migrants crossing the border every day, according to estimates, meaning that border towns already struggling with housing and feeding immigrants will be inundated further.

The mayor of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency on Saturday as the deadline approached.

“Our asylum seekers are not safe,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said at a press conference. “We have hundreds and hundreds on the street and that’s not the way we treat our people.”

Lesser said the city may have to resort to using a nearby military base to house immigrants. ​​

Abbott, who shipped thousands of immigrants from Texas to Democratic-run cities across the country, including New York, said the sheer numbers of illegal immigrants coming to the US are hampering the chances of others who arrive legally to get asylum. 

“There are people across the globe who have a valid, a solid, reason to come to the United States and they can do so legally right now. The people who have the ability to come to the United States legally get pushed further and further and further back the line every single day​ with the ​thousands of illegal immigrants coming across the border​,” he said.

Raddatz pushed back on the “open border” claims raised by some Republicans, saying she’s never heard President Biden say there was an open border but she has heard Abbott, Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeat it.

“It was known from the time that Joe Biden got elected that Joe Biden supported open borders,” the Texas governor said.

“It is known by the cartels, they have sophisticated information,” he continued. “Whether or not the Biden administration is going to enforce the immigration laws or not is known across the world but most importantly, known among the cartels​.”