For Abbott, one bad plan deserves another

It isn’t that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t have a valid complaint about President Joe Biden’s decision to repeal immigration Rule 42, a move likely to cause a real surge at the Texas-Mexican border while not giving local communities any plan to deal with problems.

Abbott and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke both criticized Biden’s move, albeit in different ways. Other politicians of both parties have also criticized Biden’s plan and he needs to rethink what he is doing.

The same is true of Abbott. How Abbott has decided to address the potential surge that says everything you need to know about how NOT to govern a state.

Rule 42, initiated by the Trump administration (surprise!), intended to lessen the burden on overworked border control officers by allowing for immediate deportation for those found without proper papers. There were no charges, no record, no nothing. Those lacking documents were just sent back across the border as quickly as possible.

And then they came back, sometimes just hours later. The rule resulted in more work for agents as they had to deal with the same people repeatedly. Bad plan.

Biden’s move to simply repeal the rule with no suggestion as to how to handle the extra people who will now be enticed to try to enter the United States is also bad plan.

I suppose this is why Abbott decided a bad plan three-peat was in order.

His twist was a real doozy, too. Abbott decided to use the undocumented migrants as a human political puppet show, perhaps as part of his attempt to win another term as governor.

He would ship them to Washington, D.C., by golly, that will show “them” — not to mention give Abbott a lot of television screen time and make him a temporary darling of the right-wing radio set.

This is not as heinous as, say, using people as “human shields,” in time of war but it is slouching in the same direction. It’s simply immoral to use people this way, even if it will help your approval rating. Abbott ought to be ashamed of himself but, of course, shame will be the furthest thing from his mind.

(As an aside, if you remember the last time a politician — of any ilk whatsoever —uttered the words: “What I did was wrong,” please send me time and date. Inquiring minds want to know.)

It does not matter that the migrants actually thought the free trip (by a charter bus and paid for by you, dear taxpayers) was a wonderful gift, perhaps because it got them out of Texas and into more friendly climes. It isn’t right to manipulate humans in such a cynical way.

Beyond that, it didn’t even have any of the negative effects Abbott was hoping to produce. The federal folks did their jobs and moved the migrants along, some to New York City, others elsewhere. Wherever they went they were treated more humanly by the governments there than in Texas.

The people of Texas treat the migrants well. It is just the government, which is supposed to represent the people where the ball doesn’t just get dropped, it gets stomped.

Whatever lesson Abbott was trying to teach the feds, it fell fall short. The lesson Texas voters should have learned is that their governor is happy to spend their money for his personal political gain.

This is not the only wasteful step Abbott took in the name of politics. Not nearly.

His second bonehead idea was to require “safety” checks of all trucks entering Texas from Mexico to be done by Department of Public Safety personnel. Abbott has no say on immigration, but he has the authority make sure trucks are “safe.”

Mind you, inspections are already done in Mexico and there is no reason to believe that the trucks aren’t safe. This was just another layer of government control run amuck.

Perhaps he tried the truck ploy because he believed that immigrants were being smuggled into the United States in the big rigs, or maybe he was just messing with them because he could.

No smuggled migrants were found, and no trucks were deemed unsafe.

The only result was a massive traffic jam that stretched for miles. As truckers waited needlessly, the produce they were carrying was rotting.

Before it was all over, roughly a quarter of a billion dollars of produce was ruined, supply chains even further disrupted and, no doubt, more price increase for consumers.

Oh, and border cities, which depend on the trucking industry, estimated that they lost a cool billion dollars’ worth of revenue because of Abbott’s rule.

None of this is what Abbott intended but it could have been foreseen with a little thought.

That’s all you need to know to understand why this has happened. Deep thinking is not a characteristic of Abbott’s administration and nothing is likely to change about that.

Find this column interesting? If so, consider subscribing to the weekly newsletter. It’s free.

Phil Latham also writes another weekly newsletter, “American Slave Stories.” To support the effort to recognize the people who built America, please consider subscribing at $5 per month.