Critics of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star have attacked it from every angle, as ineffective, unnecessary, illegal, or all of the above.
What’s clear from on-the-ground reporting is that the work Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety personnel are doing is both difficult and important and needed to help border communities struggling with a massive migration crisis.
We have expressed concern about the decision to spend billions of dollars in state funds to deploy state troops to border communities. And the impact of Operation Lone Star deserves a qualified third-party review in light of questions about statistics on its effectiveness released by the governor’s office.
But a recent report from Dallas Morning News reporters who were given rare access to operations indicates that Operation Lone Star is leading to the apprehension of migrants who are not surrendering upon crossing the border like many asylum-seekers.
Meanwhile, migrants, often through the direction of coyotes controlled by criminal cartels, use any number of methods to deter capture.
The number of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. without authorization has spiked since President Joe Biden took office. Instead of dismissing or undermining Operation Lone Star, the administration would do better to partner more closely with border states on securing the border.
The lesson from Lone Star should not be that Abbott shouldn’t have undertaken the effort. It should be that border states need greater federal resources for security.
The border is in an immigration crisis. Former Democratic state Rep. Poncho Nevárez, a border rancher, told our reporters that he agreed to permit the state to place concertina wire along his property because migrants’ trash is sickening his cattle.
And while he has criticized Operation Lone Star, he acknowledges that it will take military force to deter migrants.
That is not forthcoming from the federal government. So the state has stepped forward.
Critics are perhaps right that it will not be effective so long as there is little or no strategic federal cooperation. And the deep roots of the migration crisis won’t be corrected no matter how many people the state or federal government apprehends.
That will take a long and expensive commitment from the United States and our allies in Mexico and Central America to confront criminal gangs in those countries and to root out the human and drug smuggling networks that undermine life.
Migration will continue for the foreseeable future, and it will have to be met with stronger enforcement.
Criticizing Operation Lone Star is easy because it can feel like taking the moral high ground.
The reality on the actual ground is that border communities cannot sustain the inflow. State military and law enforcement officers are engaged in securing the border for that reason.
And they are doing it because the federal government’s response is inadequate.
