Texas routinely overstated the success of its three-billion dollar border control initiative, Operation Lone Star, by crediting the law enforcement measure with arrests that had nothing to do with immigration or drug smuggling, according to an investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and The Marshall Project.
A U.S. citizen named Thomas King-Randall, for example, was arrested for allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend’s new romantic interest. The arrest took place 250 miles from the border and neither of the agencies at the forefront of Operation Lone Star – the Texas Department of Public Safety or the Texas Military Department – were involved in the investigation into King-Randall, who is Black and was born in California.
Yet, his arrest was credited to the border control project, which was introduced – and lavishly funded – by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, last March.
From the investigation:
King-Randall’s charges were among more than 2,000, including some for cockfighting, sexual assault and stalking, that the agency stopped counting toward Operation Lone Star more than nine months into the exercise, after the news organizations began raising questions about the ties between the arrests and border security. Of those, about 270 charges were for violent crimes, which are defined by the FBI as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
The Texas Department of Public Safety told the investigation’s reporters that it routinely improves the metrics it uses to gauge the success of Operation Lone Star. But the inflated numbers clearly align with the public relations interests of Abbott, who has boasted about the project time and again.
From the investigation:
Abbott pointed to some of those arrests last year as he sought additional funding for border security efforts, bringing lawmakers back for a special legislative session. Abbott’s office received $1.3 billion of the $3 billion total, marking the first time that the governor’s allocation for border security was larger than that given to DPS.
During his most recent re-election bid, Abbott claimed that Democrats’ weakness on the border was allowing drugs – particularly fentanyl – to flow into the U.S. Operation Lone Star was his designed to be his muscular response.
More from the report:
In launching Operation Lone Star, Abbott went further than any other governor in recent history, attempting to curtail immigration by using state trespassing charges to directly target those who cross the border on private property.
The federal government has sole authority to enforce immigration laws, but Abbott increased trespassing penalties under a declaration that gave him more power akin to what he would have after a natural disaster.
Read the full investigation here.
