Construction Set to Begin This Month on Texas Border Wall, Says Gov. Abbott

Listen to the entire interview with Texas Governor Greg Abbott below.

With the crisis along the border continuing to spin out of control, the State of Texas has had to step up to defend its border with Mexico. And according to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, construction of the wall will be starting soon.

Governor Greg Abbott joined The Chad Hasty Show with Matt Martin on Wednesday to discuss the border wall and vaccine mandates.

Abbott told KFYO that when it comes to defending the border, Texas is up to the challenge. The governor first spoke about the shipping containers and razor wire that the national guard has been putting into place along the border. Then, Governor Abbott discussed when the actual wall would begin to be constructed, and it turns out, construction of the wall will begin "later this month."

"I signed the paperwork to kickoff the building of the border wall in June. Later on this month the border wall will begin going up," Abbott said. "In just a six-month time period, we've been able to do all that was necessary to begin the process to build the border wall. You will see segments of it going up before the end of this month."

Governor Abbott told KFYO that the first segment will go up in Starr County and that the border wall will be built with different materials depending on the terrain. Abbott did say that it will be a real "steel wall" that's tall. In fact, the governor said that some of the materials that will be used were purchased during the Trump Administration.

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Governor Abbott also addressed the issue of a fourth special session to address banning vaccine mandates. The governor pointed to recent court action halting the Biden administration's mandates:

Well first I'd tell you that during the last special session, even the Senate couldn't pass a ban on vaccine mandates, but put that aside, there is another reason why there is not a special session on it right now. And that is if you haven't announced the news, yesterday there was a second federal court order, a nation-wide ban on vaccine mandates that were imposed by Medicaid and Medicare for any hospital or worker that is associated with Medicaid and Medicare and that is on top of the ban from the 5th Circuit that oversees Texas put on OSHA. Here's the point. All of these federal based vaccine mandates have either been stayed or halted because of federal court rulings. If it turns out that we do continue to win those federal court rulings, which I think is going to be the case, then there is no need to pass legislation banning vaccine mandates because there will be no vaccine mandates.

The governor also said that under his executive order, businesses in Texas would be banned from enforcing their own vaccine mandates and that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would enforce that ban. However, Attorney General Ken Paxton said in an earlier interview on November 5th on The Chad Hasty Show that local district attorneys would be responsible for enforcing that ban.

Listen to the full interview above.