Since taking office in 2015, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has initiated a series of controversial actions within his administration to curb illegal immigration, including Operation Lone Star launch in March 2021 via an executive order. This operation would serve to increase security along the Texas-Mexico border by providing funds to border towns seeking to strengthen security by issuing a disaster declaration designated as a “border crisis”. The Texas Legislature has devoted nearly US$2 billion to the venture.

Abbott declared 53 counties as disaster areas due to illegal immigration and sent state troops, sheriff officers and the National Guard to arrest, detain and prosecute people on criminal trespass charges, as we've already reported here. Of the border counties, 21 have Latino-majority populations. “The white-majority counties on or near the border saw a 60% increase in troopers, from 25 to 40, working there. Among Latino-majority counties on or near the border, that increase was 92%, from 438 troopers working in 2019-2020 to 845 in 2021”, according to NBC News.

Additionally, those living in white-majority counties covered by the disaster declaration benefited from fewer warnings and citations than their Latino-majority counterparts. Citations increased in 12 of the counties that declared disasters: all on or near the border and all Latino-majority.

According to the NBC News, “state trooper deployments surged in Texas’ border counties, with the number of troopers almost doubling from 2019-2020 to 2021. The biggest increases were in border counties where Latinos were the majority; increases in white-majority border counties were much smaller, if they were increased at all. […] In Kinney County, where Brackettville is the county seat, citations more than quadrupled, from 1,400 in 2019-2020 to more than 6,800 in 2021-2022, more than in any other Texas county. The number of officers working in this county of 3,674 nearly tripled, from 14 to 41”.

With the increase in repression at the border, residents began to denounce the loss of civil liberties when they were stopped – according to the civilians themselves and by civil rights organizations, for questionable reasons – and the interrogations and searches carried out by the police authorities without probable cause. Some say they fear for their safety, as high-speed pursuits by soldiers have caused deaths in the region.

“The stops, however, are increasingly seen by some residents as targeted at Latinos or at people who fit a stereotype. Many officers are from other parts of the state with smaller Latino populations, although there are Hispanic troopers in Operation Lone Star. The troopers’ traffic stops and other aspects of Operation Lone Star prompted pleas from the American Civil Liberties Union and Texas Civil Rights Project for a Department of Justice investigation of a “DPS pattern and practice of civil rights violations”, according to NBC.

The civil liberties groups complained to Attorney General Merrick Garland that Department of Public Safety, or DPS, officers were conducting dubious traffic stops and racially profiling drivers. They said they had linked DPS vehicle pursuits in South Texas to 30 deaths since the start of Abbott’s operation. The Texas Tribune and Pro Publica obtained state records in which federal authorities are probing discrimination claims involving Gov. Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar border initiative.

Abbott faces Democrat Beto O'Rourke in his re-election bid this year, and a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that O'Rourke is closing in on the Republican. Still, Abbott remains a big favorite in the race, in large part spurred on by the state's continued economic growth.