Texas Attorney General and Governor-elect Greg Abbott (R) vowed to “add yet another lawsuit against the Obama administration” if President Obama implements immigration reform via an executive order on Friday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.
Abbott said “for one, we will add yet another lawsuit against the Obama administration. Two, I fully expect both the House and Senate to push back strongly once the new Senate is sworn-in. and they will correct whatever overreach the president has done. But three, this is going to lead to a tremendous backlash across all Americans about the dictatorial way the president is going about trying to enact policy in the United States of America” when asked what he plans to do if the president implements immigration reform through an executive order.
Abbott did argue there was middle ground with the president, stating “what Texas believes in and what I think Americans believe in is there is a step by step process that we can achieve immigration reform. The first step is to secure the border. As long as we have an open border, as long as the immigration laws are not enforced, as long as the president is inviting people to come here illegally, we will never see a secure border. So we must start with securing the border.”
He added, “We are concerned there will be a new surge in border activity in part because of the potential action the president may take.” And “what we are expecting the federal government to do is to, for one, the president not to open the floodgates of the border. But two, for the federal government to pay for the cost that Texas has incurred”
Abbott also declared “we found the Hispanic community in Texas agrees with the Republican position of securing the border because I got more than 50% of the male Hispanic vote [CNN’s exit poll says he received 49% of the Latino male vote, more than his challenger, Democrat Wendy Davis], about 44% of the overall Hispanic vote. This is an issue that really resonates across the state of Texas. We embrace and support legal immigration in this country, but everyone wants to ensure that the broken immigration system caused by Washington, DC gets fixed.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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