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In an interview with Fox News Digital, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, whose National Guard troops were recently deployed in support of ICE operations in Chicago, revealed the “substantive reason” why he has such a good working relationship with the president: “We both believe in the rule of law.”
“President Trump and I have a good, long-standing, working relationship, and there’s a substantive reason behind that. We both believe in the rule of law. We both believe in public safety. We both believed in securing the borders,” he explained.
Abbott said that he and President Donald Trump are “operating very closely aligned in ensuring that our country’s going to be safe.”
“I’m more than happy to be a partner with the federal government, making sure that we keep our country as safe as possible,” he added.
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This comes as some 200 Texas National Guard troops are currently deployed to the Chicago area, tasked with protecting federal law enforcement officers as they carry out immigration enforcement operations.
For the past several weeks, the Chicago area has been rocked by anti-ICE demonstrations that have on several occasions boiled over into violent disruption. Large crowds of what DHS has called “violent rioters” have gathered outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and have repeatedly blocked federal vehicles from exiting and entering the facility. Earlier this month, federal agents were rammed and trapped by 10 vehicles, where anti-ICE crowds had gathered for days. Nearly a dozen people were arrested.
Despite this, DHS has said its agents have received little to no support from Democrat leaders in Illinois or local and state law enforcement.
Against this backdrop, Abbott authorized Trump to deploy 400 of his Texas National Guard troops to trouble spots across the country under Title 10 authority. So far, only about half of those troops have been deployed to Illinois as a legal case against the deployment makes its way through federal court.
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Speaking with Fox News Digital, Abbott said the deployment of Texas National Guard troops, who have gained experience keeping the peace through deployments to the southern border, was “only natural.”
“What the National Guard is trained and skilled at doing is dealing with civil unrest like that. They dealt with civil unrest along the Texas border for the past four years while Joe Biden was president. They’ve dealt with civil unrest even in locations in the state of Texas, when I thought it was important to call them out and make sure that we did not have any unrest in our state. So, these are National Guard troopers who are very well-trained at being able to deal with this type of environment,” he said. “It’s only natural that, by extension, that if there’s a need for that elite National Guard to provide assistance anywhere in the entire country, that it would be the [Texas] National Guard called upon.”
Again, Abbott emphasized that the Trump administration shares a common vision with Texas, making them apt partners.
“What Texas is trying to do is the same thing the United States is trying to do. And that is very simply, carrying out the functions of the federal government. One of them is immigration enforcement, and another is public safety. The National Guard from Texas, they’re not there to police the city of Chicago or any other place. They are there to ensure the safety and security of the ability of federal officials to fulfill their constitutional duty to enforce the laws of the United States.”
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Though he gave no indication of what other collaborations Texas might undertake with the Trump administration in the future, he said that Texas remains ready for whatever is needed.
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“No one can accurately predict exactly what’s going to happen in the future. What I can predict is how Texas will respond. And that is, whenever the country is in time of need, Texans will step up and help out any way we possibly can.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner, Matt Finn, Michael Tobin and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
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