Texas Gov. Abbott Launches ‘Operation Lone Star’ to Strengthen Border Security
The decision comes after meeting with DPS Director about security at the border and COVID-19 health concerns.
While the current administration in Washington, D.C. uses National Guard troops as part of ongoing political theater, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is deploying his state troops to address a real security crisis.
This weekend, Abbott and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) launched Operation Lone Star to combat smuggling people and drugs into Texas.
The Operation integrates DPS with the Texas National Guard and deploys air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to high threat areas to deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas.
This decision follows a meeting last month between Governor Abbott and DPS Director Colonel Steve McCraw where they discussed strategies to enhance safety and security along the border.
Today Texas launched Operation Lone Star to respond to the border crisis.
It deploys Nat'l Guard + DPS Officers + air, ground, marine, & tactical border security assets to deny Mexican Cartels & smugglers the ability to move drugs & people into Texas.https://t.co/r68J2laDpH
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 7, 2021
The decision comes after a February meeting with DPS Director Colonel Steve McCraw about security at the border and COVID-19 health concerns. Abbott is, once again, taking a #Resistance approach to the policies enacted (or ignored) by the politicos in Washington D.C. and slamming Biden for the real crisis at the border.
“The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration,” said Governor Abbott. “Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.
Abbott is clearly taking the sensible approach, as Team Biden is fully in denial about the magnitude of the illegal immigration wave descending upon these shores.
Border patrol officials are anticipating 117,000 unaccompanied children will arrive at the border in 2021. Officials are expecting to have encountered nearly 400,000 people crossing the border between October 2020 through February.
The Biden administration last week denied a crisis is occurring on the border, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas instead describing the situation as a “challenge.”
“The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are working around the clock seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border — that we manage the challenge, as acute as the challenge is,” Mayorkas said.
The term “Lone Star” may prove to be most apt. Clearly, Abbott can expect no meaningful assistance from federal bureaucrats…but if he succeeds in stemming the flood, his political star will be exceedingly bright.
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Comments
Good on Abbott. This is about all a responsible governor can do, given the perverse stance the courts have taken, that states can’t enforce federal law without the fedgov’s permission. Accordingly Texas can’t enforce the actual border, or arrest people simply for having crossed it, but it can mitigate the damage done and arrest as many of the criminals among them as it can identify.
So, it seems from the article, that the legal basis is that drug smuggling and human trafficking is illegal in Texas. So as soon as people cross into Texas via a location other than a official port of entry, they can be at least detained on probable cause for smuggling contraband or humans and therefore violation of Texas law.
Deportation would still be up to the federal government, and the only removal option for Texas will be conviction and incarceration and release after incarceration if ICE does not take them. I do not know how they could hold so many people without bail awaiting trial, however.
Texas will have to pay for all of this. They will receive no federal support. I would expect a reduction in federal dollars and support to the Texas National Guard as well.
Deportation would still be up to the federal government
Why so? Sure, only the federal gov’t might be able to deport them from the country, but why can’t Texas deport them all to, say… California? Just think of it as trading them for the all the folks leaving CA.
1. That’s not deportation.
2. Texas can’t make them go if they don’t want to.
3. Texas can’t prevent them from returning if they feel like it.
Well, let’s give it a try. Maybe also a lawsuit for mandamus requiring the President to live up to his oath.
It is a terrible situation when the federal government implements policies that facilitates and abets lawlessness rather than enforce the law and ensure domestic safety. The result is anarchy.
I say Abbot should stop the flow period!!!!
Let the Feds try to stop our Guard
It’s time to fully man up!
That would make him no better than the people crossing the border.
Milhouse, spare us your Law-itis disease.
My God, the spots are putrid!
You idiot, if you don’t care about the law then what is your objection to illegal immigration? Why shouldn’t poor people cross the border to seek opportunity? You know very well that if you were in their situation you would do it, and have no moral compunctions whatsoever. The only objection is that it’s against US law; well, so is a state government arresting people who have committed no offense against the state, and whom the federal government has told it not to arrest. If you do that then you are exactly the same as them — breaking the law because you feel like it.
The objection to illegal immigration isn’t simply that it’s illegal, but that it violates our sovereignty. That’s why it was made illegal.
(Yes, you tend to see “the law” as the be-all-end-all, and it hurts your commentary.)
GWB, you have it backwards. It only violates US sovereignty because it’s illegal. Before it became illegal it didn’t violate our sovereignty.
When most Americans’ ancestors came here there were no immigration laws and no formalities; you just got off the ship and found somewhere to live. Your first encounter with officialdom was a few years later when you wanted to become naturalized. And of course there was nothing wrong with that. Only after Congress decided to regulate immigration could there be such a thing as illegal immigration, and the idea that immigrating illegally violates US sovereignty.
Most professionals tend to focus mostly on its importance. There are not very many people who are truly multidisciplinary. Without that, most are unlikely to have a broad understanding.
You can be a tone deaf dumb fuck at time numbnuts ???
I do think it is an interesting concept. How long should we continue to strictly adhere to a legal system that is heavily politicized and is also incapable of addressing the real problems our country has to deal with?
Without the legal system there is nothing wrong with what they are doing in the first place. It’s only the law that says their presence here is illegal.
I think most of us differentiate between “illegal” and “bad”. We also differentiate between “legal” and “good”. I, and many others, see the law as the means to an end, rather than an end in itself. For that reason we are willing to abandon a particular law when it no longer serves as a means to the end we seek.
It seems to me that the law of frequently weaponized against people with whom I share an affinity and I find the weaponization of the law unacceptable. The solution isn’t to simply accept any harm our enemies can dish out using the law, but to be wise in determining whether a law should determine our behavior. I am not so bound to the idea of following the law that I am willing to place doing so above other philosophical ideals.
The threading has put you at the end of the chain, so I can’t hit a thumbs-up. But you nailed it.
The LAW is not the final arbiter of good and evil. That was the wisdom of what our Founding Fathers wrote. They recognized good and evil, right and wrong, existed as an outside standard. Then they tried to write a Constitution that recognized that and bounded the LAW within certain limits from that outside standard (hobbled by politics, as all men’s intentions are hobbled by sin).
And the weakness leading to our current predicament was not in the Constitution, but in the hearts of men, as they rested on the laurels of those previous generations, instead of jealously and zealously guarding their rights and the principles of the Constitution. They desired wealth and tranquility more than the animating contest of freedom.
But immigration is not bad. It’s good. Surely everyone agrees on that. Republicans loudly deny being anti-immigration; they insist that they’re only against illegal immigration. Very well, but by definition the only thing that makes illegal immigration illegal is the law!
Dathurtz, well said. When law breaks down we enter the realm of war.
And yet the law is against you. Entry without permission is a violation. What is it t hat you don’t understand? Go to Law School if you want to argue law. (I did).
One of the Constitutional duties of a Texas governor is to repel invasions. The fact that the invaders are poor and badly organized is irrelevant. The federal government has refused to do it’s duty, so it falls to the state, and then to the people, according to the Tenth Amendment. The militia in Texas would only have to shoot a few hundred illegal border-crossers to persuade the rest of the invaders to try to enter legally.
No, it is not. The constitution makes that the exclusive responsibility of the president, and if he chooses not to do it then it doesn’t get done.
Not true. The national Constitution:
1. makes it the duty of Congress to “provide for” calling forth the militia to repel invasions (in general),
2. restricts states from “keeping troops” in times of peace, or from making war with other nations, unless actually invaded,
3. and mandates that the federal gov’t as a whole “protect each of them against Invasion.”
Other than being Commander In Chief, the President has no specific role in protecting states from invasion. And it certainly does not make him the sole arbiter of that.
Given how focused you are on legalism, you really should know your Constitution better.
And then there’s this, Milhouse, from the Constitution of Texas:
ARTICLE 4, Sec. 7: GOVERNOR AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF MILITARY FORCES. He shall be Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the State, except when they are called into actual service of the United States. He shall have power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the State, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions. (emphasis added)
Illegal immigration is not an invasion. And US law overrides the Texas constitution.
The number of illegals we have is a F ing invasion. A invasion that has greatly altered our demographics, a number which is significantly lowering our intellectual competitiveness, and therefore our future economic competitiveness.
The situation is not acceptable.
And yet the law is against you. Entry without permission is a violation. What is it t hat you don’t understand? Go to Law School if you want to argue law. (I did).Define “invasion”.can you find one that includes non-military actin? Hint: Invasive diseases.
God bless Texas!
Federal judge to block this move by Abbott in 10…..9……
Then tell the “federal judge” that the federal government has abdicated it’s role in regulating immigration, that chaos reigns at the border, and that the state of Texas must now step in to do what is necessary to protect its citizens from the mess the Biden regime has made of immigration and the border.
And then also remind the “federal judge” that he/she can make as many judgements and/or injunctions as he/she wishes. But unless they have the means to enforce such declarations they can stick them where the sun don’t shine. Respectfully if course, don’t want to be accused of inciting an insurrection after all.
The courts have already rejected that argument. States have no authority to protect themselves in this manner.
And the federal judge has the entire apparatus of the federal government to enforce his orders. Federal law is the supreme law of the land, and overrides all contrary state laws, including state constitutions.
List of court cases that support your claim. Be precise. Thanks.
No, they don’t. They have the “apparatus of the judicial branch” which doesn’t give them much in the way of anything to enforce their arbitrary decisions if a state decides it has had enough of their nonsense.
No, the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land. Everything else flows from that. Even federal law. The power/authority of the federal government isn’t absolute and must abide by constitutional limits.
For instance the case against Arizona during the 0bama years. The supreme court was very clear about it. If the president refuses to do his duty nobody else gets to do it instead.
Wrong. The federal government stands ready to enforce any order the judge makes. The federal judiciary is only bereft of enforcement authority when the federal government stands in its way, which is not the case now. Trump might have refused to enforce a judicial order against Texas, but Biden (or whoever is pulling his strings) will delight in doing so.
I was quoting the US constitution, you idiot. The US constitution says that all federal laws are the supreme law of the land, and override all state constitutions and laws.
The supreme court was very clear about it.
The Supreme Court is very clear about a lot of things where it is also very wrong.
That might not be so in this case, but your apparent reliance on their judgment seems of a religious nature, not a rational one.
What they say is by definition the law. Which is what we are discussing.
No Milhouse, you have misquoted the Supremacy Clause in exactly the way that would support your position. Why do you do such a thing that’s so easy to catch? It says the Constitution, not Federal Law.
Then F those courts.
Abbott is doing the maximum he can within established federal law. He’s taking care not to cross the line, so there shouldn’t be an injunction against him. If there is one, he has a very good chance of having it overturned on appeal. But only because he’s being so careful. If he took the advice here, he’d be struck down immediately.
“[Abbott is] taking care not to cross the line, so there shouldn’t be an injunction against him. If there is one, he has a very good chance of having it overturned on appeal.”
As Trump’s so-called Muslim ban showed, appeals can take time (weeks, months) before sanity is restored. The process becomes the punishment as illegals flood across the border.
yep. Beyond that the only further remedy is exercising its option to leave the nation. I wouldn’t say union… early on in the Civil War Lincoln still spoke about the “Union” but later changed to the “Nation” as the past was not retrievable once the bloodshed was so great.
We are so past retrievable anyway. It’s monopoly now where it is just a matter of time before the one-two punch of hyperinflation and loss of reserve currency status. Who would want near worthless greenbacks when the Chinese currency will have more value?
And, Abbott says, “That’s your ruling. Now, come enforce it!” In 3, 2, 1…
“The term “Lone Star” may prove to be most apt.”
Fully expecting a “hold my beer” observation to follow.
Makes me want to move back there. So much more pro-American than Georgia. And some guts. Not enough, but more than most.
Really hope it works, but remember Arizona trying it during Barack administration and he stopped it.
Barky instill running the show so it won’t probably last.
Barky instill running the show so it won’t probably last.
0bama was never running the show. He was always an empty suit (primary difference from the current empty suit is he didn’t have dementia, so it wasn’t as obvious) being used as a front man by the cabal behind him.
I hope it survives the legal system.
I recall there was a gap in the wall somewhere in Texas, and a private group on their own dime completed it, very well done, and not only did it get ripped out but Trump denounced them for doing it.
Every two years, the legislature in Texas sets aside billions of dollars to pay for the high cost of illegal immigration. No matter how much is allocated, it is never enough. Democrats want to retake political control in Texas, and they think millions and millions of illegal immigrants are the way to do it.