Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript: Interview with Greg Abbott
Interview
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Also breaking tonight, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order restricting the transportation of migrants due to COVID-19.
He joins us now with more.
Governor, this has been an extraordinarily, challenging legal issue for you, in as much as the when the federal government does not enforce the law of the land, there have been legal precedent -- precedents preventing you from doing so. That has now resulted in you now spending and allocating $250 million to build the wall. But now more importantly, as a result of the pandemic, you now have a legal remedy available to you that maybe you didn't have before?
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R), TEXAS: I do. Actually two, one that I triggered pursuant to the Texas Constitution. I've authorized the Texas National Guard to perform law enforcement functions. Up until now, they have been assisting the Texas Department of Public Safety. They've been assisting in the process of clearing the land and getting the land ready for the border wall as well as other activities like that.
However, because of manpower needs, we need to have the National Guard not just engaged to assist but to engage to arrest that will lead to the jailing of the people who are coming across the border illegally.
Now on top of that, what you just talked about -- my new executive order today. This stems from what Sara was talking about, but what happened yesterday in La Jolla, Texas, where it was learned that migrants have been released by Border Patrol. They were in La Jolla found at a Whataburger with extreme signs of illness. And they themselves said they had COVID-19.
And then it was learned there was a hotel full of people with COVID-19, and that's exactly why I issued this executive order. It does a couple of things. One is it empowers the Texas Department of Public Safety to stop any vehicle where there is a suspicion that that vehicle may be transporting migrants into and around the state of Texas who may have COVID-19.
And second, it orders the Department of Public Safety to return that vehicle to either the point of origin which would be where the Border Patrol officers let them go or to the port of entry.
And so, I have a job to protect the safety and health of the people state of Texas and that includes especially now preventing President Biden from importing COVID-19 into Texas, as well as into to the United States.
HANNITY: Governor, can you explain now the Biden CDC policy of -- they are now supporting mandating vaccines for Americans. And even if you're vaccinated, they're telling you again now that you've got to put your mask back on, while simultaneously allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that we know about every month cross the border, many of them with a very high rate of COVID positivity, and then dispersing them to the other -- the continental 48 states in the U.S.
How -- why are they not as onerous on people that are not respecting our laws, our borders and our sovereignty? I mean, that's -- this is a -- this is madness to me.
ABBOTT: So, obviously, it's hypocritical, but obviously, it shows that the Biden administration cares more about people who are not residents of America than he does of the residents of America, because he has one standard trying to mask up and vaccinate our fellow Americans, but by allowing free pass into the United States of people with a high probability of COVID and then spreading that COVID up in our communities, as has been shown in the Rio Grande Valley.
So what the Biden administration is doing is deadly, it's dangerous and it must be stopped, and that's what my executive order that issue today tries to achieve.
HANNITY: Governor, thank you.
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