Lonestar State accuses Biden of sending 1,500 soldiers to the border to 'do paperwork'

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott criticized the Biden administration for sending 1,500 troops to the southern border, claiming that they were there only to “do paperwork.”

“President Biden is sending 1,500, quote, soldiers to do paperwork, and he’s not going to secure the border,” Abbott said in an interview with Fox News Sunday, adding that the number of soldiers was not enough to realistically secure the border. 

With the pandemic-era immigration policy Title 42 set to end on May 11, federal authorities are expecting a dramatic surge in undocumented migrants attempting to cross the border. Title 42, set by the Trump administration, allowed border authorities to quickly expel migrants seeking asylum at the border.

In preparation for the end of the policy, the White House sent 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border to help deal with the migrant surge by performing data entry, warehouse support, and other administrative tasks. 

They "will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday regarding the troops. "This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties."

Governor Abbott, however, called Biden’s actions “a day late and tens of thousands of soldiers too few.”

"Only when Biden came in and eliminated all those [Trump-era] policies and put out a welcome mat to the entire world that the border is now open, that we suddenly have the chaos that’s caused solely by policies put into place by Joe Biden," Abbott said.

“We do not need 1,500 soldiers,” Abbott said. “We need 15,000 or 150,000 to secure the border because of the open border policies of the Biden administration.”