During the Trump Administration, there was an advisor on his staff named Stephen Miller. Miller had the very bright idea of ripping babies out of their mothers’ arms and separating migrant families at our border. (That’ll show ’em!) Months and, in some cases, years passed before these families were reunited. These children will be emotionally damaged for life because of this cruel trauma. It was nothing short of an atrocity. 

Today, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and his cohort lace the Rio Grande with concertina wire which will, assuredly, injure and possibly kill more migrant children. Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton childishly pride themselves on defying the federal government over matters of immigration. But this dog and pony show does nothing to address our very real immigration challenges.

Currently, the mass of migrants reaching our border — with legally valid pleas for asylum — originate in Venezuela, a nation under U.S. sanction. This traces back to the Trump Administration and remains U.S. policy today. While sanctions may have a desirable effect in overseas states like Iran or Russia, they have a different impact in the Americas. That’s because nations like Venezuela are connected to the U.S. via land. And the people of that country are suffering under both the sanctions regime and the cruelty of their government. Because no ocean separates them from us, they can, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “vote with their feet” and come to the U.S.

These are, in the main, decent human beings who have the same rights as us to a dignified existence. But Texas Republicans have found a more nefarious political use for these refugees. In what constitutes nothing less than a mocking political stunt, Greg Abbott and his friends have trafficked these human souls to far flung corners of the land, most of them having no idea where they’re even going. Abbott doesn’t want to end the border crisis; he wants the crisis! He benefits from it as a political tool. He’d never let this good crisis go to waste. Under his regime, there will be no genuine solutions to the border crisis.

But, to be sure, the crisis is real. And if Texas government genuinely wanted to pursue solutions, they’d seek to partner with our federal government rather than fight it. That’s what honorable people do, even if they generally disagree. They come together to hammer out solutions to problems rather than making political hay out of them.

We Texans deserve better than the bullying and adolescent behavior of Republicans — in our state and elsewhere — when it comes to such intensely vulnerable human beings.