"We've turned back tens of thousands of migrants who tried to get across the border, and we denied them even coming across the border," he told Fox Sunday.
"Once they cross the border, we now have two options: One is to arrest them – and we’ve made tens of thousands of arrests for people and put them in jail," Abbott continued in his Fox appearance. "And now we have this new tool, where we are now returning them to the border."
Abbott's comments come amid a federal investigation into Operation Lone Star, the controversial border clampdown the governor launched in March 2020. Last week, the Texas Tribune and ProPublica revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Operation Lone Star over alleged civil rights violations.
Abbott went on to boast that Texas was building its own wall on the southern border and putting down "mile after mile after mile" of razor wire to deter migrants from crossing into the state.
In a press release last week, Abbott announced an executive order that enables the Texas National Guard and the Department of Public Safety to "apprehend illegal immigrants who illegally cross the border between ports of entry and return them to the border."
Emailed by the Observer, the governor's press office didn't reply to request for clarification about what precisely he meant, whether Operation Lone Star involved extrajudicial deportations or physical pushbacks on the border. Instead, a spokesperson redirected the questions to the Texas Military Department, which didn't reply before publication time.
Since first launching Operation Lone Star, the governor has time and again ramped up border security measures that have seen the Texas National Guard and the Department of Public Safety deployed to frontier. In a press release last week, he said the operation has been bankrolled to the tune of $4 billion.Texas has taken unprecedented action to secure the border.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) July 11, 2022
My executive order authorizes Texas National Guard & DPS troopers to return illegal immigrants to the border.
We will continue securing the border as Biden & Congress IGNORE this crisis. pic.twitter.com/uCVLdpwNg6
As Abbott ups the ante once again, rights groups and legal watchdogs have blasted the governor's border clampdown, the alleged civil rights infractions that come with it and his vilification of asylum seekers and other migrants.
After all, both U.S. and international law grant people the right to apply for asylum, and neither require that their asylum applications be filed in a specific territory, such as the U.S., Mexico or their home countries.
"It has become abundantly clear that Gov. Abbott is using various tactics against migrants and asylum seekers as a publicity stunt … and that there is a real significant amount of harm that is happening," said Amy Fischer, Amnesty International's advocacy officer for the Americas.
What remains unclear is whether Abbott's border clampdown actually includes extrajudicial deportations or what are known as "pushbacks" in international law. But either way, Fischer explained, the U.S. government regularly carries out pushbacks on the southern border.
"Basically, what we have seen over the past few years is a dismantling of the right to asylum on the border," Fischer said, adding: "We at Amnesty would say that all of these things are obviously human rights violations and against both U.S. and international law.""There's absolutely reason to be concerned about civil rights violations with respect to Operation Lone Star." - Kate Huddleston, ACLU of Texas
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By email, Laura Peña, the legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project's Beyond Borders Program, said Abbott's executive order last week "is outrageous and unlawful, and sets a dangerous precedent for law enforcement both at and away from our borders."
The Texas Civil Rights Project has called on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to put out a statement "detailing the agency’s refusal to cooperate with [Texas'] extremist ploy to manipulate rule of law," Peña said. "We need to put a stop to the political grandstanding on immigration in Texas and put forward solutions that address the needs of border residents and provide migrants a fair and safe process for entry into this country."
Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said "there's absolutely reason to be concerned about civil rights violations with respect to Operation Lone Star.
"The bottom line for the executive order is it is another dangerous political stunt by a governor attempting to distract from his political failures."
As the midterm elections near, the governor has escalated attacks on President Joe Biden's administration over migration and border policies. In May, he called on the federal government to stop providing baby formula to migrant families held in U.S. detention centers. That same month, he said Texas might try to overturn a Supreme Court decision that requires states to provide public education to undocumented children.
Earlier this month, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) declared the U.S.-Mexico border "the deadliest land crossing in the world," citing new data that confirmed at least 728 deaths on that frontier last year.
"Our data shows the growing crisis of deaths during migration in the region, and the need to strengthen the forensic capacity of the authorities to identify deaths on these routes," Edwin Viales, who wrote that IOM report, said in a press release.
Viales added, "We cannot forget that every single number is a human being with a family who may never know what happened to them."
But even as Abbott and other Texas Republicans rail against the Biden administration and push for more aggressive measures on the U.S.-Mexico border, some conservative groups are demanding more.
Last week, local conservative officials in southern Texas called on Abbott to adopt the word "invasion" to describe the humanitarian crisis on the border. Abbott has previously issued disaster declarations for the border crisis.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who joined the border county officials at a press conference last week, told Fox News he backed declaring the migration crisis an invasion. "All these leaders in the counties in South Texas are asking for is that Texas step up and we go do what the federal government refuses to do," Roy said.
"People are going to say that this is a slap at Gov. Abbott or Attorney General [Ken] Paxton," he added. "It is not. They are stepping into the breach, and Texas is the collateral damage of a federal government that is leaving us dangling."
In a press release Monday, an Idaho-based organization called Bring Our Troops Home praised Abbott's use of the state National Guard and DPS to prevent people from crossing but called on the governor to treat migration as an "invasion."
