The governor of a northern border state is taking matters into his own hands to help secure the southern border after receiving "crickets" from President Biden on a plan to resolve the crisis.
Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a declaration on Tuesday, which authorizes the deployment of several Montana National Guardsmen to aid in Operation Lone Star. He joined "The Faulkner Focus" to discuss his decision to take action as a northern governor.
"I declared an emergency so we could mobilize Montana National Guard troops to go down and fulfill a request that we got for Governor Abbott," Gianforte told Harris Faulkner on Wednesday. "I was down in Shelby Park. We saw how effective National Guard troops are at securing the border."
"We're pleased to join Governor Abbott in Operation Lone Star to secure the border," he continued. "We've had enough fentanyl confiscated, literally, to kill every American in our country. It has to stop. The Biden border policy has been as effective as a screen door on a submarine. It's completely porous, and if he won't do his job, we're going to do it for him."
The emergency declaration authorizes members of the National Guard to help secure the border, and they will help Texas officials beginning next week through May 12, according to the governor's office.
Gianforte said Montana has been drastically affected by the border surge and issues stemming from the Mexican drug cartels, despite neighboring the Canadian border.
"We are arresting Mexican cartel members here in Montana," Gianforte said. "We've seen a 78% increase in fentanyl just in the last year, and meth continues to be a problem. We don't have Montana meth, though. We have Mexican meth that is profiting the cartels and killing the citizens of our state."
Gianforte confronted the president at a White House governors' meeting in February on his silence on a Republican-backed proposal to secure the border. The governor again presented Biden with the 2021 plan and said he is still waiting for a response.
"I think the primary responsibility of the federal government is national security," Gianforte said. "It comes before everything else, and yet he's been sitting on his hands... 27 governors presented a 10-point plan to him two and a half years ago. I, again, handed it to him at the White House earlier this year just asking for a meeting, and it's been crickets. We've heard nothing in response."
"We should have bipartisan support to secure the border," he continued. "We're a country made up of immigrants. We want immigration, but it needs to occur legally, not crossing the river in the middle of the night."
