WESLACO — Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged a dozen state attorneys general from around the country to join their efforts against TikTok during a security briefing at DPS headquarters on Thursday.
Abbott claimed the app is a haven for Mexican cartels in their recruitment of American youths to conduct human and drug trafficking.
“Cartels in Mexico are using TikTok to advertise to recruit smugglers in Texas and San Antonio, Houston and other cities … to smuggle people here in Texas, which would include victims of human trafficking,” Abbott said.
TikTok roundly denied the allegation, saying in a statement that it does not condone criminal behavior on the platform.
“TikTok strictly prohibits content that seeks to promote or facilitate criminal activities, and we would remove leaders of cartels or gangs if they were identified on our platform. We also work with third-party intelligence firms to bolster out defenses and make reports to law enforcement as appropriate,” a spokesperson for the company said Thursday.
“We’d welcome the opportunity to work with the governor in this important area,” the company said.
The group of attorneys general — some hailing from as far away as Alaska — were also joined by Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw for what was billed as a briefing on border security from state and federal law enforcement officials.
However, just after the news conference got underway, Paxton announced that the group would not be hearing from U.S. Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials after those agencies received directives to decline attending the briefing.
Paxton criticized the move as yet another example of President Joe Biden’s “lack of transparency,” especially after the agencies had indicated more than a month ago that they would participate, he said.
Paxton’s remarks would telegraph the overall tone of the short news conference, which included introductions of the attorneys general, as well as short statements by the governor and McCraw.
They did not allow questions from the media.
After the brief introductions, Abbott delivered a set of remarks that largely focused on excoriating the president in what the governor characterized as the Biden administration’s “abandonment of the southern border.”
Abbott referred to the president as a “law breaker” while praising the Republican attorneys general in attendance as people who desperately needed to “hold the president accountable for his abandonment of the rule of law” in regard to immigration and border security.
“It is astonishing that one law breaker that we are having to wage legal action against is the president of the United States. There are laws passed by the United States Congress that the president is not enforcing,” Abbott said.
The AGs, the governor said, are in a particularly unique position to oppose the president thanks to their ability to take legal action in the form of lawsuits against the administration and its policies.
To that end, Abbott urged the group to join Texas and, in particular, Paxton, who has thus far filed seven lawsuits against the federal government.
Paxton hinted he would be announcing another immigration-related lawsuit during another appearance with DPS officials slated for Friday in Edinburg.
Abbott also referenced Paxton’s existing efforts to combat sex trafficking via his prosecutions of online platforms, such as Backpage.com, which was once the second largest online classified ads site.
Under Paxton’s direction, the Law Enforcement Division of the AG’s office arrested Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer in 2016.
Working in partnership with federal authorities, Backpage was shut down. The company later pleaded guilty to human trafficking.
The governor urged Paxton and the attorneys general to similarly focus their attention on TikTok, the video sharing application popular with social media influencers.
He called on Paxton and the attorneys general to take up a “proposed action item” that would have them sue the social media company to put a stop to the criminal activity he alleges is occurring there.
“That must be shut down. … An injunction could be used to shut down TikTok in its use of its device and platform to allow criminal activity to be perpetuated that leads to horrific human trafficking,” Abbott said.
“TikTok should be ashamed, condemned and have a legal action brought against it for promoting human trafficking in Texas and the United States of America,” Abbott added with emphasis before saying that DPS has been at the “tip of the spear” in confronting the issue.
But the governor’s pronouncement came as a surprise to McCraw, who has led DPS since 2009.
“The TikTok situation, I wasn’t aware you were going to note that,” McCraw said, briefly addressing the issue before pivoting to the news conference’s overarching theme of border security.
“The cartels have long recruited our children — on both sides of the border — to do their deeds. … But now, using TikTok, we’re seeing kids being recruited from around the state — San Antonio, Dallas, Houston — coming down here in droves as a result of this global mass migration event we’ve seen,” McCraw said.
McCraw’s comments during the news conference boomeranged between speaking of drug smuggling and migrant crossings.
Of the illicit drug trade, McCraw said that fentanyl has increasingly become the most common narcotic seized by DPS troopers and other law enforcement, dwarfing other drugs like methamphetamine.
But the DPS director also spoke of Operation Lone Star, the “all hands on deck” mandate Abbott issued last March to deploy as many assets along the border as possible.
McCraw estimated some 200,000 people have been apprehended and turned over to Border Patrol by DPS troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers since the implementation of Operation Lone Star last year.
He also touted the governor’s plan to charge migrants with criminal trespass, a state level charge that allows local law enforcement officers to circumvent the constitutional role that demands federal law enforcement officials — not state or local agencies — enforce immigration laws.
“Criminal trespassing: you put the capabilities in place where we were able to arrest some of these criminal trespass and actually book them in a TDC jail,” McCraw said, adding that some 2,500 migrants have been arrested and charged with criminal trespass thus far.
Though McCraw praised the governor’s policy, it has come under fire from both human rights activists and legal officials.
Hundreds of migrants have been released from custody after waiting months to see a judge, access legal representation or because prosecutors failed to include information in charging documents.
And earlier this month, a Travis County judge ruled that the policy is unconstitutional, according to a report by The Intercept.
The Travis County District Attorney’s Office refused to defend the policy when an Ecuadorian migrant who had been arrested under the program sued on constitutional grounds.
“(T)he State agrees that Applicant’s prosecution for criminal trespass as part of Operation Lone Star violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution and represents an impermissible attempt to intrude on federal immigration policy,” Travis County District Attorney José Garza said.
