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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott held a press conference on border security this afternoon. “With the Biden administration ending Title 42 expulsions in May, Texas will be taking its own unprecedented actions this month to do what no state in America has ever done in the history of our country,” Abbott said.

The first part of his new plan involves inspections of vehicles coming across the border. “Effective immediately, the Texas Department of Public Safety will conduct enhanced safety inspections of vehicles as they cross the international points of entry into Texas,” he said. “This is going to dramatically slow traffic from Mexico into Texas,” he added.

The second part of his plan is to bus migrants to Washington, DC. “Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington, DC. We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border,” he said.

During a Q&A Abbott added, “Even before the elimination of Title 42, they’ve been dumping large numbers of migrants in cities up and down the border, leaving the cities to grapple with challenges they don’t have the capability of dealing with.

“They themselves have been putting these migrants on buses to San Antonio. So instead I got a better idea. As opposed to busing these people to San Antonio let’s continue the ride all the way to Washington, DC.”

Abbott said he was also planning boat blockades in some parts of the Rio Grande and the addition of razor wire to some areas. He also said he would take additional actions that would be announced next week.

Is this legal? According to the Texas Department of Public Safety the inspections will not take place on federal property, such as the bridges that cross the border. Instead this will be treated as an expansion of safety checks that Texas already does once a vehicle enters the state. As TDPS Director Steve McCraw explained “We don’t need probably cause to do safety commercial vehicle inspections.”

As for the busing part of this, critics are already suggesting it could lead to lawsuits.

Denise Gilman, co-director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the busing proposal disrespects people coming to the U.S. in search of protection.

“It treats them as inanimate objects to be moved around and used for political points,” she said.

There are also serious legal questions, Gilman said. While Abbott called the initiative voluntary, if any migrants are forced to or coerced to travel it could be a violation of their rights and trigger lawsuits, she said.

Sen. Ted Cruz has some additional suggestions for where the charter buses might go.

Cruz is joking, I think, but even so he makes a good point. If buses full of migrants were being dropped off in high profile places like the US Capitol, it would get a lot more attention and many people would probably find the idea shocking. I fully expect that by tomorrow there will outraged people on the left denouncing this as cruel. How can you dump people off a bus in a place where they have no support and nowhere to go?! But that’s what is happening every day in Texas and Arizona. It’s just that most people aren’t aware it’s happening because it’s not widely discussed and the clips don’t show up on the nightly news.

Here’s the full press conference.

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