EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: 'Beto' O'Rourke Would Eliminate Border Security in Texas, Says Gov. Abbott

EAGLE PASS, Texas — Governor Greg Abbott said the election of Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke in November would lead to the elimination of border security in Texas. The governor responded to Breitbart Texas about O’Rourke’s claim that deploying the National Guard to the border was a “solution in search of a problem.”

During a recent campaign stop in College Station, Texas, O’Rourke told supporters “There are [National] Guard members from Texas A&M who are on the border right now in Zapata, in Webb, in Hidalgo Counties to go be part of a solution in search of a problem,” Breitbart Texas reported.

Governor Abbott responded to O’Rourke’s comments, saying, “I can’t tell if he’s either uninformed or if he’s just being kind of dishonest with Texas. When you look at the fact that we’ve apprehended enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in Texas, and the fact that fentanyl is the leading cause of death in the United States for people between the age of 18 and 45.”

“In Texas, more than 1,300 people lost their lives last year because of fentanyl,” the governor added. “There was a story just this past week in Austin, Texas, where multiple people lost their lives because of fentanyl.”

Abbott said that an Austin police investigator said the fentanyl obviously came across the border from Mexico.

“There are lives that have been lost because of the Biden administration’s refusal to secure the border,” Abbott explained. “Conversely, there are lives that have been saved because of the fentanyl and other drugs that we have seized.”

In addition to the drug seizures, the governor explained the impact Texas made on human smuggling and human trafficking.

“There’s horrific human trafficking going on that Texas has been able to interdict, stop, and prevent the human traffickers — or better, arrest the human traffickers,” the governor stated.

“Anybody that says we’re not doing anything down here, to be honest, doesn’t care about human traffickers. They do not care about fentanyl. They do not care about the smugglers. They do not care about the endangerment they’re putting these ranchers in,” he continued. “Either they’re in complete denial, or they simply do not care about what’s going on.”

“In the course of the past year, you know, (O’Rourke’s) from El Paso, there’s been enough people just apprehended coming across the border over the past year that would be equal to two-times the size of El Paso, Texas,” Abbott said.

“Anybody that thinks there’s not a problem on the border either doesn’t care, has a blind eye, or they may be part of the same ideology that President Biden is and what ‘Beto’ campaigned on,” the Texas governor stated. “They campaigned on open borders, they want open border policies, they want these people coming in from more than 150 different countries from across the globe.”

“We know for a fact that our fellow Texans disagree with that ideology, our fellow Texans including the people who live on the border, they believe in the rule of law, they want the border secure,” Abbott concluded. “There’s only one person who’s stepping up and doing anything about it and that is the governor of Texas right now. Robert Francis O’Rourke, if he were to be elected governor, would eliminate border security. He’d be locked arm-in-arm with President Biden and impose open-border policies on the Great State of Texas.”

Editor’s Note: This is part three of an exclusive interview with Governor Greg Abbott. In the first segment, the governor discussed the acquisition of border wall panels by Texas that were abandoned by the Biden administration. In the second part, Abbott discusses the impact of the current border crisis on Texas ranchers near the border. The entire interview can be seen here.