Texas governor's costly border operation plagued by low morale, fuzzy math, mission confusion, politics

Texas is spending $2 billion a year on Operation Lone Star, launched by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) last March to address a purported emergency on the Texas-Mexico border with 10,000 Texas National Guard troops plus Department of Public Safety officers.
"Abbott and DPS have repeatedly boasted in news conferences, on social media, and during interviews on Fox News that the border operation has disrupted drug and human smuggling networks," The Texas Tribune reported Monday with ProPublica and The Marshall Project. "But the state's claim of success has been based on shifting metrics that included crimes with no connection to the border, work conducted by troopers stationed in targeted counties prior to the operation, and arrest and drug seizure efforts that do not clearly distinguish DPS's role from that of other agencies."
"The whole reason for all this, you know, playing with statistics, is for optics so that the governor could get reelected," Gary Hale, a former Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence chief now at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, told the Tribune. That's worked for Abbott, "but what's the net gain? I don't think there's any. Zero. We really haven't had any significant impact on migrant smuggling or drug trafficking."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Tribune and Military Times reported in late February that a leaked survey of some 250 National Guard members deployed in south Texas found widespread disillusionment, confusion about their mission, unhappiness with the involuntary deployment, and a common assumption they were there to help Abbott's re-election campaign. There have been a handful of suicides.
"I hate it here," one respondent said. "Most of us signed up to help Texas in times of need like hurricanes," another Guard member said. "This doesn't feel like we are helping any Texans besides the governor."
Some of the Operation Lone Star units are posted far from the border, including about 30 Guard members ordered in January to stand idly outside giant private ranches 80 miles north of Mexico, the Tribune reported last week. Two of the most prominent ranches, King Ranch and the GOP-connected Armstrong Ranch, told the Tribune they did not ask for the National Guard sentinels. "We really don't understand why we are there," one Guard member told the Tribune. "We're essentially mall security for ranches that already have paid security details to protect them."
You can read more about Operation Lone Star at The Texas Tribune and watch the Tribune's James Barragán discuss his reporting on Austin's KVUE.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
France and Indonesia promote a contentious bid for an Israel-Palestine two-state solution
Talking Points Both countries have said a two-state solution is the way to end the Middle East conflict
-
Film reviews: Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, Lilo & Stitch, and Final Destination: Bloodlines
Feature Tom Cruise risks life and limb to entertain us, a young girl befriends a destructive alien, and death stalks a family that resets fate's toll.
-
Music reviews: Morgan Wallen and Kali Uchis
Feature "I'm the Problem" and "Sincerely"
-
Trump pauses all new foreign student visas
speed read The State Department has stopped scheduling interviews with those seeking student visas in preparation for scrutiny of applicants' social media
-
Courts try to check administration on deportations
Feature The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to end protected status for Venezuelans, but blocks deportations under the Alien Enemies Act
-
Trump pardons Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery
speed read Former sheriff Scott Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in prison on federal bribery and fraud charges
-
Germany lifts Kyiv missile limits as Trump, Putin spar
speed read Russia's biggest drone and missile attacks of the war prompted Trump to post that Putin 'has gone absolutely CRAZY!'
-
Tied Supreme Court blocks church charter school
speed read The court upheld the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision to bar overtly religious public charter schools
-
GOP megabill would limit judicial oversight of Trump
speed read The domestic policy bill Republicans pushed through the House would protect the Trump administration from the consequences of violating court orders
-
Judge scolds DOJ over Newark mayor arrest
speed read Ras Baraka was arrested during a May 9 surprise visit to a migrant detention facility
-
Trump lectures South Africa president on 'white genocide'
speed read Trump has cut off aid to South Africa over his demonstrably false genocide claims