Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said recently that his state is doing everything it can to stem the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the border except "shooting people," because otherwise the "Biden administration would charge us with murder."
Abbott made the comments last week during an interview with conservative syndicated radio host Dana Loesch, host of "The Dana Show."
Abbott was detailing everything that Texas is doing to fight back illegal immigration, only to be sued by President Joe Biden's Justice Department at every turn.
"We are using every tool that can be used from building a border wall, to building these border barriers, to passing this law that I signed that led to another lawsuit by the Biden administration where I signed a law making it illegal for somebody to enter Texas from another country," Abbott told Loesch.
"The only thing that we're not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border, because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder," Abbott added tongue-in-cheek.
At issue for Abbott is the record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border into Texas. A Customs and Border Protection source told Newsmax earlier this month that there were about 302,000 encounters at the southern border in December, surpassing the record for a month of 269,735 in September.
However, Abbott's comments earned a rebuke from the chair of the Texas Democratic Party on Thursday.
"The only thing stopping Greg Abbott from ordering law enforcement to shoot migrant women and children are murder charges," Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. "Time and time again, Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans have made it abundantly clear they have no morality or humanity.
"Their only solutions to 'secure' the border are separating families, medieval death traps, and mass imprisonment of migrants and Texans who are perceived to be undocumented by law enforcement."
What Hinojosa calls medieval death traps, Abbott calls effective tools for doing what the Biden administration should be doing — fighting illegal immigration. Abbott said Texas is succeeding where Biden is failing yet suing.
"In the history of America, have you ever seen a president try to prevent a state from securing its own safety? We laid down this razor wire, hundreds of miles of it that was an effective deterrent and repelled migrants from entering the state of Texas," Abbott told Loesch.
"And because it was so effective, Biden ordered the Border Patrol to either cut it or to lift it," he added.