Texas taxpayers have shelled out a whopping $10 billion for their state’s border security effort, Gov. Greg Abbott says — and the state can’t afford four more years of chaos at the border.
Abbott told The Post in an exclusive interview that he believes Vice President Kamala Harris will not work with him to secure the border if she is elected.
As evidence, he noted that Harris has been invited multiple times to tour the Texas border, and “She never has ever even responded.”
“She’s refused to step up” — despite President Biden giving her responsibility for stopping the flow of illegal migrants, he said.
Abbott’s border security effort — dubbed “Operation Lone Star” — has resulted in more than 500,000 illegal migrant apprehensions, 46,000 criminal arrests and the seizures of more than 521 million lethal doses of fentanyl since it started in 2021, Texas authorities said.
The governor has also bused more than 119,000 migrants to sanctuary cities, including New York City, where he’s sent 45,900 migrants in just two years.
However, Texas can’t afford to keep footing the bill, he said.
“Texas has stepped up in such a prolific way, coming out of Texas taxpayer pockets by far more than $10 billion of our own money to pay for border security to deal with the refusal of the Biden-Harris administration to secure the border,” said Abbott.
“We cannot go through another four years of that,” he added.
In March 2021, Harris was tasked with addressing the “root causes of migration” to help stop the flow of illegal immigration. However, what followed was record levels of illegal border crossing.
Illegal migrant crossings slowed in recent months after the Biden-Harris administration introduced new restrictions on asylum access — with border agents recording roughly 58,000 migrant encounters in August — down from 250,000 in December.
Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris admin has allowed 1.3 million migrants to fly directly to the US or use a phone app at the border to enter the country.
Harris visited the border twice during her vice presidency, once in June 2021 in El Paso, Texas, and again Friday on a campaign stop in the remote desert of Douglas, Arizona.
During her visit to El Paso, border agents who were present for the trip previously told The Post they were instructed to sanitize the area and clear the streets of migrants to conceal the severity of the crisis.
But while Abbott has sent Harris “several invitations” to see Texas’ border crisis firsthand since it began to ramp up in 2022, he has never received a response, he said.
“There have actually been no conversation despite the invitations … she has ignored the primary responsibility given to her by President Biden to do something about the illegal immigration process,” said Abbott.
Harris has touted her time as a prosecutor in the “border state” of California — both as the state’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney — while on the campaign trail, claiming she targeted cartels.
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Despite her last-minute attempts, Abbott predicts a Harris presidency will still spell uncontrolled flows of illegal immigration.
“There’s no way America can remain the country that we are if we have four more years of Kamala Harris. This is a line-in-the-sand moment when Americans must realize that our country and our future are at stake because of the illegal immigration policies that are allowed by Kamala Harris,” Abbott said.
“We have to shut down the border and that starts with electing Donald Trump as president.”
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign didn’t respond to The Post when reached for comment.
