Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador slams Greg Abbott’s immigration order

Mexico’s president blasted a new plan by Texas’ governor to use state law enforcement to arrest immigrants illegally crossing into the US as “immoral” — vowing Friday to push back against “anti-immigrant” American candidates and political parties.

“If there’s a candidate from a party that mistreats immigrants and Mexicans, we’re going to ask our countrymen there that they don’t vote for that candidate or party,” Lopez Obrador told reporters during a news conference.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s comments come one day after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order to the state’s National Guard and Department of Public Safety to detain migrants and send them back across the border, accusing President Biden of refusing to do his job.

Lopez Obrador dismissed Abbott’s order as a political ploy meant to boost his chances of reelection. Republicans across the US have seized on Biden administration immigration policies as a major campaign issue ahead of this year’s midterms.

“It is not his legal responsibility to make that decision, it is something that corresponds to the federal government in the United States,” Lopez Obrador said, according to Bloomberg.

Abbott remains the favorite to win a third four-year term as governor, though a Texas Politics Project poll this week showed his lead over Democrat Beto O’Rourke had shrunk to just six percentage points. Texas hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since Ann Richards in 1990.

“Even though we are respectful of the sovereignty of other countries, we see that there are anti-immigrant campaigns for electoral purposes,” the Mexican leader said. “I consider it immoral, political.”

Lopez Obrador added that he was “absolutely sure” Biden wouldn’t approve of Abbott’s plan. The two world leaders are set to meet at the White House on Tuesday to discuss migration, among other issues.

Legal experts have decried Abbott’s order as unconstitutional, with one telling The Post: “As they say in Texas, this dog won’t hunt.”

“They’re relying on the guarantee clause of Article Four, Section Four,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday, “and that deals with an invasion, which is generally interpreted and long interpreted to mean an actual foreign invasion in the form of an army, an organized force” rather than disorganized migration.

With Post wires