DHS Secretary Mayorkas is derelict in his duty to secure the southern border as thousands of illegal migrants flood the border each week. The ACLU wants DHS to be even more passive on the border because… racism. Of course. The ACLU is asking DHS to reject Texas’ immigration enforcement efforts.

One area of enforcement that the ACLU is concerned about is Governor Abbott’s executive order authorizing state troopers to transport migrants back to the border ports of entry.

The ACLU and other groups have filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice about Operation Lone Star’s alleged civil rights violations, and the civil rights group warned that if the federal government continued to collaborate with the state operation it could be accused of participating in discriminatory practices.

“DHS should reject any involvement with DPS’s immigration enforcement efforts in South Texas—including with Governor Abbott’s July 7 executive order—to ensure that it has no entanglement whatsoever with the agency’s discriminatory actions,” the letter reads. “Federal funding cannot further discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.”

ACLU Texas and ACLU’s national leadership is requesting that the Biden administration investigate Abbott’s order to transport illegal migrants back to a legal port of entry, while remaining on the Texas side of the border. The migrants are then turned over to federal immigration authorities. The ACLU claims there is little clarity on how migrants should be transported and under what authority they are being detained. The rub comes in because immigration law enforcement is a federal responsibility but the Biden administration has abandoned its responsibilities along the southern border so it is up to border states to handle the overcrowding caused by the flood of illegal migrants. Yes, it’s an unprecedented move but what is Abbott to do? He has consistently requested assistance from DHS and the Biden administration only to be ignored. Apparently, they think as long as they pretend there is no Biden border crisis, they don’t have to do anything. The crisis is intentional. Joe Biden wants an open border and once migrants cross the border, he wants them to be allowed to stay in the U.S.

The ACLU pointed to a DHS inspector general finding earlier this year that a CBP outdoor holding area did not meet temperature requirements set out in the federal standards and said holding migrants outside for three hours, as the Tribune reported, poses a risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

The group was also concerned about at-risk groups like pregnant people, elderly people and people with disabilities who are at higher risk for heat-related illnesses. Federal agents are trained on how to care for these groups, the letter said, but DPS officers are not.

“Simply put, migrants are being held on federal property in violation of the [federal standards] and in potentially dangerous conditions,” the group’s letter reads.

The group also said there is significant evidence that Abbott’s border security mission, dubbed Operation Lone Star, engages in “systemic discrimination against Black and brown migrants and Latinx individuals in South Texas” because its traffic stops “have plain indicia of racial profiling.” The group said the state is also targeting Black and brown migrants for arrest and greater punishment in a “separate criminal system under Gov. Abbott’s discriminatory ‘catch-and-jail’ scheme.”

The purpose of transporting illegal migrants to a legal port of entry is to assist Border Patrol in processing them. The ACLU wants DHS to ignore Abbott’s order and let the migrants remain where they came across the border. In order to do that, there has to be detention centers or jail space available. Most of the border communities in Texas are small and do not have the resources needed to house and provide necessities for the migrants. In order to ease the overcrowding, why not drive them to the nearest port of entry so that they can be processed and make their asylum claims in a lawful manner? The Biden administration does not care about law and order. Now the ACLU is jumping in and throwing the race card. How predictable.

Instead of holding illegal migrants accountable for breaking U.S. law, the ACLU wants Border Patrol and other federal agents to be investigated. It also wants the federal government to stop taking the migrants into custody who are driven to a port of entry.

The ACLU on Monday called for an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The ACLU asked the agency to: monitor the Eagle Pass port of entry to ensure federal agents are acting appropriately; collect and publicize data on the purported state authority for the transfer of people from Texas DPS to federal immigration agents; identify gaps in U.S. Customs and Border Protection policies related to this practice and issue relevant recommendations; and take all appropriate steps to identify and address civil rights violations that could be occurring as a result of Abbott’s order.

The civil liberties group also called on the federal government to stop taking migrants transported by state authorities into their custody.

“DHS should decline to take custody of individuals in these circumstances, and should prevent Texas state and local officials from detaining individuals on federal property pursuant to Governor Abbott’s executive order,” ACLU staff attorneys wrote in a letter to DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

If DHS and Joe Biden were concerned about the chaos on the southern border, they would act. They don’t care. Instead of 87,000 IRS agents being hired to take money from working people in order to fund Biden’s huge climate change bill, Biden should have increased the resources at the southern border. And, Congress has to reform immigration law. The current laws on the books have to be enforced so that the rule of law is re-established. Most migrants who claim asylum do not qualify for asylum because they are coming for economic opportunity. That isn’t a reason for asylum. That is what the legal immigration system is for.