Old North News

Wall Street Journal columnist Carine Hajjar discussed the recent move by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to transport illegal migrants to Democrat-led cities and states amid an alleged border crisis in an article published Friday, Sept. 16.

"The true culprits are in Washington, not Austin," Hajjar wrote. "Congress hasn’t enacted meaningful reform to accommodate more legal immigration or stabilize the border, and the federal executive branch has fallen down on the job of administering existing law at the border and elsewhere."

According to Hajjar, Abbott has been moving buses of asylum-seekers from the Texas-Mexico border to sanctuary cities across the country since August, with such cities including New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

“We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border,” Abbott said in April, according to the Patriot Project.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed NC Senate Bill 101 in July. The bill, had it gone into effect, would've required sheriffs to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when illegal immigrants are detained for violent crimes. 

“Gov. Cooper has effectively declared North Carolina a sanctuary state," said U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. "The veto of a commonsense bill to stop sanctuary city policies allows his political allies to keep ignoring federal law enforcement and keep releasing dangerous and violent criminals back into communities across North Carolina where they will continue to commit violent crimes."

American sanctuary cities follow certain police procedures which shelter illegal immigrants, according to apsanlaw.com. The term "sanctuary city" is most commonly applied to cities which do not allow municipal funds or resources to be used for federal immigration law enforcement.

North Carolina has six confirmed sanctuary counties: Buncombe, Durham, Forsyth, Mecklenburg, Orange and Wake. Said counties include major cities such as Asheville, Concord, Winston-Salem, Hillsborough, Durham and Raleigh. Each sanctuary city operates with its own paperwork and detainment requirements and policies.

The Biden administration announced the making of over 2 million immigration arrests along the Mexican border over the past 11 months, according to The Washington Post article published Monday. This marks the first time that annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that threshold. Furthermore, U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 203,598 migrants crossing over from Mexico in August alone. If the trend continues, authorities expect to have made 2.3 million arrests during the 2022 government fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.