Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) introduced Wednesday he’s deploying Nationwide Guard troops to statewide protests towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making him the primary governor to willingly use navy power on this wave of demonstrations.
“Texas National Guard will be deployed to locations across the state to ensure peace & order,” he wrote on social media. “Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest.”
The troops “will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order,” he continued.
Demonstrations have arisen in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and different cities in Texas following ICE raids rounding up and detaining undocumented immigrants at work and on the streets, together with individuals displaying as much as immigration court docket hearings and younger, asylum-seeking youngsters.
The Texas Division of Public Security stated it arrested simply 5 individuals throughout the protest Monday in Austin, which introduced out a whole lot of demonstrators. Town’s police division arrested eight others.
Brandon Bell by way of Getty Pictures
The governor’s announcement comes the identical day a large protest is predicted in downtown San Antonio on Wednesday night.
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg stated at a press convention earlier Wednesday that Abbott hadn’t given him any discover of the Nationwide Guard being deployed, including that his constituents are fed up with the “government’s crude interpretations of immigration law and cruel approach to human rights.”
Trump despatched the Nationwide Guard into Los Angeles as protests took off there final weekend. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has loudly rebuked Trump for doing so with out his request, and the state filed a lawsuit arguing there was a “lack of evidence that local law enforcement was incapable of asserting control and ensuring public safety.”
Amid the pushback, Trump introduced he was additionally deploying the Marines to Los Angeles, regardless of protests there being largely peaceable.
Trump stated Tuesday he’s carried out enjoying by the principles in terms of sending within the Nationwide Guard, bucking the protocol of letting governors and native leaders make that decision.
“You have to remember, I’ve been here before and I went right by every rule. And I waited for governors to say, ‘Send in the National Guard.’ They wouldn’t do it,” Trump stated from the Oval Workplace.
“I said to myself, if that stuff happens again, we’ve got to make faster decisions, because they don’t want to do it,” he continued.
