Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) harshly criticized the Biden administration over its recent executive action on border security, accusing it of “gaslighting” U.S. residents.

The White House announced on Tuesday that President Joe Biden would ban illegal immigrants from taking asylum in the United States, which would remain in effect so long as the seven-day average of apprehended migrants by Border Patrol agents is above 2,500 arrests per day. Abbott contended that this order does not offer any security to the southern border, nor is there anything to prevent anyone from illegally crossing.

“And so as long as the Biden administration refuses to provide any type of enforcement, any type of blockage of people crossing illegally, all this new Biden policy is going to do is to actually attract and invite even more people to cross the border illegally,” Abbott said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “And you’ve seen on videos, ever since the Biden order went into place, there’s no slowing down of people crossing the border. In fact, it’s just accelerating, and so this is gaslighting our fellow Americans when Biden gets up and says this is going to stop people from coming across the border, when he says it’s going to secure the border. In fact, it is making the border illegal crossings worse.” 

The Texas governor added that “known criminals” are among the people that the Biden administration has allowed into the country. As such, Texas law enforcement will “go after” these criminals within the state in response to them being allowed into the U.S.

Abbott also said that he has spoken to former President Donald Trump about what they can do to secure the border if he wins the 2024 election, which would include bringing back Trump’s policies. Among these policies would be his “Remain in Mexico” policy, while also ending “catch and release” of illegal immigrants across the country and resuming construction of the U.S. border wall.

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Internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection data leaked to the Washington Examiner revealed that between 117,000 and 122,000 immigrants were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents along the southern border in May. The figure is down from more than 128,000 in April and nearly 250,000 in December 2023.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was confronted on Sunday about the timing of Biden’s executive order on the border, specifically on why the Biden administration waited months after a bipartisan deal in the Senate to address the border crisis failed. Mayorkas contended that this bipartisan deal had been rejected twice, and that the administration opted to make its own action instead.