HuffPo: “UPDATE:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) slightly eased his new border policy on Wednesday afternoon by ordering state police to return to their previous practice of randomly inspecting vehicles coming from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.
The 8 miles of border Nuevo Leon shares with Texas includes one bridge for international commercial crossings.
“The effect of this will be that the bridge from Nuevo Leone and Texas will return to normal effective immediately, right now,” Abbott said at a press conference, noting that Nuevo Leon officials have agreed to beef up border security on their side.
There are 12 other commercial crossings between Mexico and the U.S. that are still subject to Abbott’s tightened restrictions, according to the Texas Tribune.
Abbott positioned his policy as a response to the Biden administration’s decision to end a Trump-era mandate requiring migrants to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed.
“If you want relief from the clogged border, you need to call President Biden,” Abbot said at the news conference.
PREVIOUSLY:
A new truck inspection policy implemented by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is causing “significant disruptions to the food and automobile supply chains,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday, piling onto criticism of the new regulations.
Abbott ordered Texas state police to begin inspecting commercial deliveries crossing the border from Mexico last week, despite federal inspections already in place. He and other prominent Republicans claim without evidence that the southern border is overrun by drugs and human traffickers due to what they call President Joe Biden’s “open border policies.”
But Abbott’s new policy is “unnecessary and redundant,” Psaki said in her statement.”