Texas Governor Orders Enhanced Inspections of Commercial Vehicles Entering from Mexico

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state officials to prepare to create “enhanced safety inspection” stations Wednesday to check vehicles entering Texas from Mexico for illicit drugs. The enhanced safety inspections announcement comes in reaction to the Biden Administration’s order to end the Title 42 coronavirus protection protocol in May.

Governor Abbott announced a series of steps on Wednesday afternoon in Weslaco, Texas, to expand Operation Lone Star — the State’s response to the open borders policies of the Biden administration.

“The first involves inspections,” Abbott began. “A zero-tolerance policy for unsafe vehicles for smuggling migrants across the border is being implemented immediately.”

The governor ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to increase safety inspections on vehicles crossing the border from Mexico into Texas. Colonel Steve McCraw, Director of the Texas DPS, told the governor his order would go into effect at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon. He said the State identified 28 locations to carry out these safety inspections and are prepared to begin those operations today.

McCraw added that the cartels that smuggle migrants into Texas do not care about public safety. “They don’t care about how many people they poison. They don’t care about how many people they kill.”

McCraw said the use of commercial vehicles to move migrants into Texas and then into the U.S. interior is increasing.

“Obviously, these vehicles are unsafe themselves,” the DPS director explained. “But, they’re even more unsafe because they’re carrying people inside.”

Border Patrol agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are expected to be overwhelmed with migrant crossings in the days and weeks following the expected end to Title 42 in late May. Resources of many federal law enforcement agencies are supposed to be stretched thin as they respond to the expected spike in already record-setting border crossings.

Texas Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX) told Fox News on Wednesday that the administration is anticipating approximately 500,000 migrants to cross the border in the weeks following the end of Title 42.

“They’re talking about 500,000 in the next five weeks,” McCaul told Fox News. “That would be 100,000 people per week coming into the country. We don’t know who they are.”

Mexican cartels have historically used the mass migration spikes as a tool to tie up federal law enforcement resources to enable them to move large quantities of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and other illicit drugs across the border, Border Patrol officials previously told Breitbart Texas.