"Full Measure" host Sharyl Attkisson investigates the border crisis playing out in Eagle Pass, Texas. She speaks with the local sheriff and other law enforcement officials and tours the site where many thousands of unchecked illegal border crossings are taking place each day. She also looks at the effort by the state of Texas to halt the flow of migrants and the role of the Biden administration and Mexican cartels.
SHARYL ATTKISSON: We begin with the border crisis that some officials say has turned into a catastrophe. Right now, there is an epic battle in Texas over whether states have the right to protect their own borders from illegal foreigners entering when the federal government won't do it.
Three years into the Biden administration, illegal border crossings continue to shatter all-time records with well over 7 million southwest border encounters in three years. The House is moving to impeach Biden's Homeland Security secretary over the chaos, and today, we were returned to Eagle Pass, Texas, ground zero for the controversy, and where we find big changes since our last visit a year and a half ago. As the crisis has worsened, Texas has increasingly crossed swords with the Biden administration.
As the sun rises on Eagle Pass, Texas, one of the first changes we discover is, it's now harder for the media to get a front-row seat to the historic border chaos. Since our last visit to Eagle Pass, authorities and cut off access to the place where many of the illegal border crossings happen, under that bridge. To be clear, they haven't cut off access to the legal border crossers. They have cut off access to the media.
So while foreigners can still cross at will, the credentialed press are restricted from public property where we can see it. The local Maverick County sheriff agrees to get us into the restricted area bordering the Rio Grande. Barbed wire put up by the state is another new feature since our last visit. Tattered clothes mark a popular route.
Like most of America's border towns, Maverick County, Texas, is dominated by Democrats who don't see eye to eye with President Biden on this issue.
MAVERICK COUNTY, TEXAS SHERIFF: In the Trump years, I know he kept them on the other side in Mexico and it was stopped. When this administration came in, it's like they opened the borders. Now we have this new precedent that's going to open up the borders and open arms and they're going to start crossing.
SHARYL ATTKISSON: This group tells us they have just come in from Honduras and Venezuela. They are bound for Houston... The sheriff shows us another recent feature in the border crisis under Biden -- too many unidentified bodies to bury, and a trailer to store them.
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Another addition to the landscape... A giant federal facility built to hold and process masses of foreigners... The attendants asked us to leave.
Next, we meet up with Sergeant Remi Cordova from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Even before we can start our interview, we see a group waiting across the frigid river from Mexico. Two head back, probably guides we're told, they will probably return with more.
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Up the river, he shows us new state additions, besides coils of barbed wire, new open spaces where they used to be brush.
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The Texas border initiative is called Operation Lone Star. As part of it, Governor Greg Abbott has ignited criticism and praise by busing a fraction of the millions of illegal immigrants to sanctuaries that invite and protect them from deportation. About 100,000 have been taken to L.A., Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Denver, Chicago, and New York City.
But this dynamic is heading for a dramatic shift on March 5th. A new Texas law will make illegal immigration a state crime. Local police will be able to make arrests rather than having to turn people over to Border Patrol, and the courts can order them back to Mexico.
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Even before the new law took effect, Texas began flexing its muscles. The week we visited Eagle Pass, the Texas National Guard took control of this same area, shutting out federal border patrol, which is been letting more and more foreigners come in illegally, even opening gates in the border fence.
The Department of Justice and other advocates for illegal border crossers are arguing Texas's actions and the new law are unconstitutional. Meanwhile, it's hard not to notice that everywhere you look, someone is making a lot of money off the border crisis. Billions of dollars are going to federal and local agencies, nonprofits, and contractors for security, transportation, facilities, fencing, labor, processing, and supplies. The Mexican cartels are getting rich, too. They collect thousands of dollars from most every illegal border crosser, according to Border Patrol. That adds up to somewhere around $14 billion over three years. That doesn't count the money they are making from all of the drugs they are moving across the porous southern border.
The Biden administration blamed Texans for the drowning death of a woman and two children crossing illegally last month, claiming the Texas National Guard wouldn't let border patrol rescue them. But it turns out, the three victims were already deceased long before Border Patrol notified the guard and tried to get access to the river. The Justice Department and other advocates for illegal immigrants are suing Texas over the new law that will let local police arrest, saying that law violates the Constitution.
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