Texas Guv endorses Trump for President during visit to US-Mexico border town

Houston, Nov 20 (IANS) Texas Governor Greg Abbott has endorsed Donald Trump for President in 2024 during the latter's visit to a border town on the US-Mexico border where he slammed US President Joe Biden over his handling of immigration.

“We need Donald J. Trump back as our President of the United States of America,” CNN quoted the Republican Governor as saying at an event with the former president in Edinburg, Texas on Sunday.

Addressing the crowd, Trump bashed Biden over his handling of the border, arguing the US now has the “most unsecure border in the history, I believe, really, of the world".

Trump, front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has been ramping up his rhetoric on the campaign trail, promising to conduct the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if wins the election next year.

The former President has publicly said he wants to revive many of his first-term immigration policies to restrict both legal and illegal immigration — including reinstating and expanding a travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries and bringing back a Covid-era policy known as Title 42 to further restrict immigration into the country.

Meanwhile, the state of Texas remain locked in a hard-fought legal battle with President Joe Biden's administration over its efforts to curtain illegal immigration, CNN reported.

In the latest development, Abbott is expected sign a bill that would make it a new state crime to enter Texas illegally and give local law enforcement the power to arrest and order migrants to leave the US.

“Stopping the invasion at our southern border is an urgent national security necessity and one of President Trump’s top priorities. For that reason, he has laid out – in his own speeches and Agenda 47 platform – by far the most detailed program for securing the border, stopping illegal immigration, and removing those who should never have been allowed into our country in the first place,” a spokesperson for the Trump campaign said in a statement to CNN.