Texas Gov. Greg Abbott griped about states having to cover the costs to educate "illegal immigrant" children Friday, a comment that drew swift criticism as many in the state are still recovering from a mass shooting in the border town of El Paso, where the shooter specifically targeted Mexicans.

Moreover, the Republican governor's remarks were made on Twitter at 2:17 a.m. in response to what appears to be a fake account .

"I teach illegals all day long in public schools, where are the American citizens I should be teaching," the Twitter user asked . "Why are my tax dollars paying for illegals to be educated?"

Abbott then retweeted the account with the directive, "Google Plyler v. Doe," which is the landmark 1982 Supreme Court decision that held that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status.

In the same tweet, Abbott added, "5 liberals on the Supreme Court ruled that Texas had to provide and fund public education for illegal immigrants. The next decade, in Texas v. U. S., Federal courts rejected our lawsuit that the federal government should pay for that education cost."

Relying on the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that funding saved by excluding children in the country illegally from public schools would not outweigh the harm and costs imposed on society from denying them an education.

"By denying these children a basic education," Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority, "we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation."

The Twitter exchange comes just hours after Abbott held the first safety commission meeting in the wake of the Aug. 3 shooting in El Paso, where a white nationalist killed 22 people and wounded dozens of others when he entered a Walmart with an AK-47 in one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history. Abbott convened lawmakers, educators and community leaders to "combat the rise of extremist groups and hateful ideology," among other things.

It also comes after Abbott came under fire earlier this week for distributing a Republican fundraising letter that echoed President Donald Trump's anti-immigration agenda just one day before the shooting.

"Just three weeks in June, 45,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended crossing the Mexican border into Texas," Abbott wrote in the Aug. 2 letter. "If we're going to DEFEND Texas, we'll need to take matters into our own hands."

The governor's office did not return multiple requests for comment to clarify whether Abbott believes public schools should serve all children, including those living in the country illegally and those whose parents are living in the country illegally, as well as whether he's planning to challenge the Supreme Court ruling or pursuing some sort of alternative to get the federal government's help to cover costs.

Recent media reports show the Trump administration has been working since 2017 to find a way around the Supreme Court ruling to block children in the country illegally from being able to enroll in public schools.

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Abbott's concern over funding is real: Local school districts across the country are strapped when it comes to resources for K-12 education, especially in poor communities that don't generate lots of revenue from property taxes, which funds the majority of school budgets. And in states like Texas, where 1 in 5 children live in poverty and 1 in 4 children live with at least one parent who is not a U.S. citizen, the problem is compounded by the Trump administration's heightened immigration enforcement agenda.

Many analysts expect that White House efforts to prioritize Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, accelerate deportations and build a wall along the southern border, among other enforcement mechanisms, will scare immigrant and Hispanic communities away from filling out important government forms, like the upcoming 2020 census , that are crucial to schools tapping into state and federal funding.