Gov. Abbot began his border initiative, Operation Lone Star (OLS), in March of last year; since then the operation has grown to be the most expensive investment by Texas in in border security, having increased state spending from $110 million in 2007 to $3 billion as of last year.
Operation Lone Star has been riddled in controversy since its inception, often being cited as expensive political posturing. As covered in earlier posts, the initiative involves border wall construction, the deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops under the pretense of a “disaster declaration,” and the redirection of the Department of Public Safety (DPS) state troopers and state judicial personnel towards the mass arrests of migrants for trespassing. To maintain so much personnel continuously obviously takes a considerable amount of money, but based on the most recent round of committee hearings over border security it appears that Texas underestimated how much.
The Texas Military Department, which oversees the deployment of National Guard troops, has now overspent their portion of the border security budget twice, and told the Texas Senate Committee on Border Security that they would need an additional $530 million to continue functioning through the summer. State officials already transferred $480 million to OLS from other departments in January of this year to keep the operation functioning through spring. To cover costs Gov. Abbott at the end of April stated that he is redirecting an additional $500 million from other agencies to the initiative. The funds are mostly being taken from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services Commission and the Department of Public Safety and are being used to pay for National Guard troops. Operation Lone Star is on track to be a yearly investment of about $2 billion.
A significant portion of the redirected funds, about $1 billion in total, was taken from federal coronavirus relief funds. Gov. Abbott and other state officials were able to exploit gaps in the federal relief package by backfilling public health and safety agencies and then redirecting those funds to the governor’s office. While the move is not illegal as Congress never put in any provisions that prevented states from reconfiguring their budgets, a state with over 86,000 deaths from the coronavirus probably should have used the funds for public health measures instead.
So what are some of the results of Gov. Abbott’s border crackdown? One consequence is $4.2 billion in damages to the Texas economy and the loss of a major international railway trade connection.
Gov. Abbott earlier directed DPS troopers to make additional truck inspections in light of the Biden admin’s announcement to end title 42. An earlier blog post covers the event. The results of which was the discovery of a few loose brakes, some broken headlights and an estimated loss of $4.2 billion to Texas in economic damages according to Waco-based researcher Perryman Group. There has been no evidence of the additional checks discovering any illegal drugs or trafficked humans.
In response to Texas’s tampering with international trade the Mexican government declared that it will shift the construction of its long planned railway trade connection, worth billions of dollars, out of Texas and into New Mexico according to the Dallas Morning News. “We’re now not going to use Texas,” said Mexican Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier at a conference on April 28 in Mexico City. “We can’t leave all the eggs in one basket and be hostages to someone who wants to use trade as a political tool.” Mexico is Texas’s No. 1 trading partner with about $39.5 billion in goods trucked over their shared border from both directions in February alone.
But that’s only one facet of the multipart initiative that is Operation Lone Star. How have the mass arrests affected organized crime and illegal migration? According to the joint investigation by the Texas Tribune, The Marshall Project and Propublica, not much. Gov. Abbott and DPS have claimed that OLS has led to over 11,000 criminal arrests, the referral of tens of thousands of unauthorized immigrants to the federal government for deportation and the seizure of thousands of “lethal doses” of illegal drugs. However, the Texas Tribune’s investigation has shown that the statistics used by Texas officials have been based on changing and often unclear metrics.
The investigation found that more than 2,000 of the arrests counted had nothing to do with the border initiative with crimes including cock-fighting, stalking, sexual assault and more. Since the news organizations’ investigation, DPS has since removed those numbers. In the evidence provided by DPS, the only agency to release data over OLS, there is also little to no distinction between arrests and seizures made by recently mobilized DPS troopers and federal agencies. Several times now throughout the news organizations’ investigation DPS has rescinded and altered its data.
While there is little clarity over how OLS has affected crime at the border, there are ample statistics on current border crossings. According to The New York Times there have been 129,000 recorded crossings into Texas this past March, nearly 11,000 more than March of last year when Operation Lone Star began. And crossings are only expected to rise with the coming end to Title 42.
With lackluster results and growing costs Gov. Abbott and other officials such as State Attorney General Ken Paxton have begun to explore other potential avenues for addressing border policy while superseding federal government authority. One such idea that has garnered some traction is the official declaration of an “invasion.” Ken Paxton and Gov. Abbott had lawyers from their offices meet last month to discuss the reality of such a move.
By officially declaring an “invasion” Gov. Abbott would be able to invoke war powers that would give the state unprecedented control over its borders. The move would also comply with a clause in the U.S. constitution that prevents states from engaging in war except when “actually invaded.”
This does not mean the declaration comes without risks. Such a move would almost certainly lead to a federal challenge in the courts as expressed by Gov. Abbott himself. “If we do use this strategy, it could expose law enforcement in the state of Texas to being prosecuted,” Abbott said during a recent news conference. But, he added: “Is it something we’re looking into? Yes.” If an “invasion” declaration were to occur one could expect even more border initiatives like Operation Lone Star.
It is not clear whether or not Gov. Abbott would make such a risky and unprecedented move as to amass war powers at the state level. However, it is clear that the state is willing to continue to throw billions of dollars into “border crackdowns” with little regard to the actual consequences.