Texas Spent Billions on Border Security. It's Not Working
Texas has spent two years and billions of dollars on the most aggressive attempt by any state to take control over federal border security. There’s no indication it has worked.
Operation Lone Star, a top priority of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, has inundated the U.S.-Mexico border with thousands of Texas state troopers and National Guardsmen, started work on a state-controlled border wall and built a new skeleton justice system with its own courts, judges and jails to lodge misdemeanor state trespassing charges against migrants.
The program is an explicit challenge to the national government, which by law controls international borders and immigration enforcement.
This week, the program was in the public eye for reports of inhumane treatment of migrants. In a July 3 email, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, a trooper and medic raised concerns to his superiors, saying troopers and Guard members on the operation were instructed to push a nursing mother back into the river, to deny water to migrants even in extreme heat and to block a 4-year-old who was trying to cross coils of razor wire, from reaching shore. The email, earlier reported by the Houston Chronicle, detailed instances of injury that included a pregnant woman entangled in the wire having a miscarriage and numerous severe lacerations.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-billion-dollar-border-security-migration-isn-t-paying-off-16ed598d?mod=djemalertNEWS
= new reply since forum marked as read
