When Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry talks about immigration on the campaign trail, he hammers President Obama’s policies and touts his own experience standing up to the president during last summer’s border crisis. But Perry will also need to demonstrate to Republican primary voters that his nuanced approach to immigration can succeed at the federal level.
Perry’s path to the nomination may feature more roadblocks than there are Border Patrol checkpoints in South Texas. Perry did slow the influx of Central Americans into the Rio Grande Valley during last summer’s border crisis, but at great cost to his state. A memo leaked from the Texas Department of Public Safety earlier this year appears to show that Perry had a larger role in stemming the tide of illegal immigrant children flowing into the U.S. than the Obama administration.
Perry deployed the National Guard to the border last summer, and his actions elicited an immediate response from the transnational drug cartels who smuggled unaccompanied alien children and other illegal immigrants from Central America into the U.S.
“As of August 2014, the cartels had told the ‘river bosses’ to stop sending unaccompanied alien children across from Mexico to the U.S. due to the deployment of the military to the U.S. border,” the report states.
But Texas spent more than $100 million to regain control of the border, and the security did not last long. Border Patrol agents are preparing for another wave of illegal immigration from Central America, and Texas could face another border crisis. As the Washington Examiner‘s Paul Bedard noted, traffic at America’s southern border is down from last year, but remains quite high compared to recent years past.
Perry, who is expected to launch his presidential campaign next week, has not fully detailed how he would secure the entire southern border as president. Lucy Nashed, Perry’s spokeswoman, said in an email that it’s a complex issue and added, “If Gov. Perry decides to run, he will lay out his plans at the appropriate time.”
“No governor in the country has more firsthand experience with the federal government’s failure to secure the border than Gov. Perry,” Nashed said in a statement. “As we’ve learned in Texas, securing the border will take a combination of strategically placed resources including more personnel on the ground, strategic fencing in the metropolitan areas, aviation assets and other technology.”
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Examiner that the federal government should not leave Texas to shoulder this burden alone. She said she thinks the federal government should direct more funding toward border security, and look to Texas as the model for what other states must do to secure the border.
“It’s a textbook case of respective state support of federal border security,” Vaughan said. “Texas’ efforts did make an important contribution…The Texas personnel were able to step in and help interdict a lot of the other crossers who were coming, who are even more dangerous in all likelihood [than the illegal immigrant children].”
But several members of his own party have criticized Perry for being too soft on immigration. During his previous campaign for president, Perry took fire for his support of in-state tuition discounts for illegal immigrants in Texas from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
In 2011, Perry defended his decision and said, “I don’t think you have a heart” if you oppose the tuition discounts for illegal immigrants. Perry walked his assertion back earlier this year, saying that he used a “really bad choice of words,” but that offering in-state tuition to illegal immigrants was “an intellectual decision about the economics of the state.”
Perry’s maneuvering on immigration may be representative of the intellectual gymnastics other Republican presidential candidates need to do to secure the GOP nomination. Many presidential candidates have recently altered their views on a pathway to citizenship or legal status for illegal immigrants, with the notable exception of Ted Cruz, who has been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration and any pathway to citizenship.
Perry has said his record in Texas shows how the GOP can improve its standing with Hispanic voters. Perry’s emphasis on border security appears to be aimed at immigration hawks in his party’s base. While the events unfolding at the border during the campaign will likely dictate the candidates’ message on immigration, the televised debates will also play a role. One GOP primary debate will be co-sponsored by Telemundo, the Spanish-language television station, and the general election could feature a debate in McAllen, Texas, ground zero for last summer’s border crisis.
