I watched President Trump answer a border question in the Oval Office on Thursday, and the point was simple. Federal authority does not end because Texas voters just chose a Democrat for governor.
A reporter asked whether Trump was ready to reinforce the Texas southern border now that the new Democratic governor is removing state manpower from border defense. “I am sure that the new governor is going to want to have security of this Texas border,” Trump said. He noted that people on television two days earlier were saying life along the border felt “like living in heaven compared to living in hell when Biden was there.” Then came the line the White House posted on X: “I’m sure they’ll continue my policy. And if they don’t continue my policy, I will.”
What changed in Austin
Gina Hinojosa defeated Gov. Greg Abbott and takes office in January. As governor she will control Texas National Guard deployments and other state law-enforcement resources that Abbott put on the border. Her campaign criticized Abbott’s detention practices and said she would “never offer up Texas as a staging ground for operations that terrorize families,” according to reporting on her race. In a September Politico interview, she also faulted Joe Biden for failing to lead on immigration and acknowledged that silence “hurt all Democrats.”
Voters in Texas sent a mixed signal. They want relief on costs. They also live with the memory of the Biden years, when the southern border became a national crisis. Trump’s record claim, repeated Thursday, is that the southern border has gone 18 months without the illegal crossings that defined that period. Whether every statistic holds under every auditor is for inspectors to argue. The political fact is that orderly borders poll because chaos was real.
What ICE is still doing
While state politics shift, federal immigration enforcement has not paused. On Nov. 5, the Department of Homeland Security announced ICE arrests of five people it described as criminal illegal aliens. Among them, DHS named Phaisan Pongkiatsakun of Thailand, convicted in Miami of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child; Wilber Esau Sura-Hernandez of El Salvador, convicted in Fairfax, Virginia, of using a computer to solicit a minor, attempted extortion and gang participation; Felipe Menchu of Guatemala, convicted of sexual assault in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Joel Castillo of El Salvador, convicted of methamphetamine possession with intent to distribute in Fayetteville, North Carolina; and Anardo Batista of the Dominican Republic, convicted of robbery in Queens, New York.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said ICE had arrested “pedophiles, sexual predators, drug traffickers, and other public safety threats,” and that the administration would seek their removal. A Nov. 2 DHS release listed a separate weekend roundup of people convicted of manslaughter, child rape, child molestation and first-degree rape. Those cases are why interior enforcement is not a slogan.
The bottom line
I will not pretend Texas can wish away the border. If Hinojosa keeps the manpower and the policy that restored order, good. If she pulls state resources and softens the line, the federal government has every duty to hold it.
ICE’s arrest lists are ugly reading because the crimes are ugly. That is the argument for continuing removals, not for letting a change in Austin unwind what worked.
Trump’s warning was not theater. Border security is a national interest. Texas Democrats who campaigned against Abbott’s methods still owe the public a safe frontier, and the President is right to say he will enforce it if they will not.