After Abbott’s defeat, Texas’ new governor faces questions about Operation Lone Star, border security and the future of immigration enforcement.
Over nearly 12 years as governor, Greg Abbott transformed Texas into a national model for state-led immigration enforcement, spending billions of dollars to deploy National Guard soldiers, arrest migrants and build border barriers while repeatedly testing the limits of state authority.
But on Election Day, voters ousted Abbott and elected two Democrats who have criticized his immigration policies: Gina Hinojosa, the first Mexican American elected governor of Texas, and Nathan Johnson, the first Democrat elected attorney general since 1994.
Johnson will succeed Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office defended the governor’s immigration policies in federal court.
The historic Democratic wins across the country, including Texas, were a rebuke of the Trump administration’s economic policies and its immigration crackdown that has led to federal agents killing U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.
In Houston, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in July, people placed their “I voted” stickers at Salgado’s memorial.
Democrats also reclaimed support from voters in border counties, particularly the Rio Grande Valley, that had swung toward Trump just two years earlier when he campaigned on mass deportations of criminals. Leading up to the election, business owners said the arrests and deportations of undocumented people left some construction companies short of workers.
The election gives Democrats an opportunity to reshape Texas’ approach to immigration enforcement after years of Republican leadership. But Hinojosa and Johnson will inherit a system built through billions in spending, state laws, federal partnerships and court rulings that could limit how quickly they can change course.
“Obviously, a new state governor can’t rewrite immigration laws, but Texas can make a difference in terms of the choices they make about how it uses its state resources,” said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for immigrants’ rights.
Both Hinojosa and Johnson have been critical of Abbott’s approach to immigration. But on the campaign trail, they didn’t commit to fully dismantling the immigration framework the governor and Paxton have built for the past decade.
Abbott announced Operation Lone Star in March 2021, describing it as a collaboration between Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard members to combat human and drug smuggling into Texas. They deployed aircraft, boats and other personnel to assist in the mission. He said this was necessary because the Biden administration was implementing what he described as open-border policies.
Later that spring, he issued — and would later renew — disaster declarations that allowed the governor to mobilize resources and impose harsher criminal penalties on immigrants who crossed the border into the areas declared a disaster. Eventually, Abbott issued an executive order saying the state was being invaded and the federal government failed to defend the state, ordering troopers and National Guard members to apprehend migrants crossing the Rio Grande and return them to ports of entry so they would return to Mexico.
So far, Operation Lone Star has cost Texas $11 billion.
Later that summer in 2021, Abbott announced the state would fund and erect its own barriers along the Texas-Mexico border. Earlier this year, the Texas Facilities Commission, the state agency in charge of the building project, declared mission accomplished after the state installed about 82.2 miles of barrier. The state Legislature allocated $3.1 billion for the project as part of Operation Lone Star costs.
Hinojosa, who didn’t respond to questions from The Texas Tribune and didn’t bring up any policy issues during a news conference on Thursday, has previously said she would review the effectiveness of Operation Lone Star.
“Operation Lone Star needs to only exist to make us safer,” she said in an interview with KRGV-TV last month. “What has happened is we’ve spent billions of dollars in this state, billions of dollars to detain immigrants, to police for immigrants. That was not a plan to keep us safe. We need a review of Operation Lone Star.”
She has also described Operation Lone Star as “political theatre.”
“Public safety shouldn’t be a political stunt,” she said. “I will spend the money it takes to keep our community safe.”
The money behind Operation Lone Star isn’t permanent. The GOP-controlled Legislature last year approved nearly $3.4 billion for border security in the current state budget. Any funding to continue the operation into the next two-year budget cycle, which starts in the fall, would have to be renewed by lawmakers next session.
When the Legislature reconvenes in January, the House will be controlled by Democrats, many of whom, like Hinojosa, have condemned — and voted against — the state’s border security spending.
Hinojosa criticized Abbott for allowing state police to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officers to find, arrest and deport undocumented Texans. She has also said that she supports having a secure border with Mexico.
“We need secure borders, absolutely, but targeting hard-working long-standing members of our community is not making us more secure,” she told CNN on Sept. 8.
Texas immigration lawsuits
Johnson has expressed similar sentiments while also blasting Abbott’s immigration policies. His campaign statements say that he supports cracking down on drug smuggling, human trafficking and “all forms of cross-border criminal enterprise,” and add that Texans “should reject policy and tactics that damage our sense of decency and fracture our communities.”
“We should not divert vital resources away from public safety to score political points. The attorney general has a role to play in assuring all of this: assisting with federal enforcement as appropriate, and blocking federal actions when they go too far.”
Etter said that one practical thing Hinojosa can do is stop renewing Abbott’s border security disaster proclamation, which has greatly expanded his powers without going through the state legislature.
Abbott has renewed it 69 times since first issuing the proclamation in 2021. It allowed him to justify sending National Guard members and state troopers to different parts of the Texas-Mexico border to apprehend people crossing the Rio Grande as part of Operation Lone Star.
Johnson didn’t respond to emailed questions from The Texas Tribune. As the state’s chief legal officer, Johnson will inherit decisions about whether to continue legal fights championed by Paxton or change the state’s position.
Paxton’s office helped shape national immigration policy by filing lawsuits challenging federal programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — an Obama-era program that allows some immigrants with no criminal records to be temporarily protected from deportation.
Under Paxton’s leadership, the attorney general’s office also defended state enforcement measures such as Senate Bill 4, which allows police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally.
Advocates say the election results are a referendum on not just Trump’s immigration policies but Texas’ treatment of immigrants.
“Voters along the border and throughout the state sent a resounding message to Texas leaders: We have had enough, get ICE out of our communities,” said Osvaldo Grimaldo, policy strategist on border and immigrants’ rights at the ACLU of Texas.
Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, an Austin-based immigrant rights advocacy organization, said she interprets the Texas election results as a reaction to people being angry after “witnessing the cruelty towards immigrants that has been going on for the last two or so years.”
Yang added that regardless of the results, she wants to continue to put the focus on the immigrants who have been impacted by state and federal immigration policies. She hopes that with new leadership, policymakers can come up with a less punitive and more humane approach toward immigrants.
“There are still people in detention, families who are separated, asylum seekers who need representation, who are being denied access to due process,” Yang said.
Source: Texas Tribune BY Uriel J. Garcia
Photo: Texas DPS special agents take a group of five migrants from Honduras into custody as part of Operation Lone Star, in Kinney County near Brackettville, on Nov. 8, 2021. Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune/ProPublica
