Texas law enforcement officers have helped federal authorities arrest more than 3,000 illegal migrants so far this year.
During the migrant crisis under then-President Joe Biden, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021 implemented “Operation Lone Star,” which deployed state personnel to the southern border to detect and repel illegal crossings, arrest smugglers, and combat drugs such as fentanyl.
Now that the Trump administration has focused on deporting illegal migrants with criminal histories, authorities in the Lone Star State have shifted their focus from the border to assisting federal officials elsewhere, The Texas Tribune reported Friday.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) reassigned some troopers and investigators onto “strike teams” that work with federal agencies across Texas to arrest people “who have entered the United States illegally and then gone on to commit crimes in the state,” according to the agency.
“Operation Lone Star 2.0 is underway statewide — with DPS personnel working to combat and interdict criminal activity with a nexus to the border,” DPS spokesperson Sheridan Nolen said in an email to the Tribune.
From late January through early September, DPS recorded 3,131 previously unreported arrests amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Tribune said.
About 88% of those migrants arrested were picked up on suspicion of violating federal immigration laws.
Nolen told the Tribune that, as of mid-August, DPS had identified nearly 6,500 “criminal illegal immigrants with active felony warrants in Texas for a variety of offenses” that included murder, drug and sex crimes, and human smuggling.
While illegal crossings at the nation’s borders have fallen to their lowest point in decades, agents still are needed at the U.S.-Mexico border.
DPS on Wednesday announced it had seized approximately 69 pounds of cocaine during a joint operation with U.S. Border Patrol in Starr County.
Four people wearing camouflage and carrying backpacks crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in Rio Grande City, Texas. When authorities attempted to intercept the group, the subjects released their backpacks and fled toward the river and swam back into Mexico. Two backpacks containing 30 bundles of cocaine wrapped in brown tape were recovered.
The Trump administration in August opened the sprawling “Lone Star Lockup,” the largest immigration enforcement detention site in the country. It opened with a 1,000-bed capacity but will be expanding to 5,000 within about 18 months.
The new detention site is located within the boundaries at Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army post, the Washington Examiner reported.
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