The Texas Land Commissioner has offered President-elect Donald Trump 1,402 acres along the U.S.–Mexico border near Rio Grande City to build deportation facilities as part of his mass deportation plan.
In a letter, sent to Trump on Tuesday, commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered up a recently acquired plot of land located in Starr County to build facilities that will help law enforcement coordinate, process and detain undocumented immigrants. The exact plot offered has nto been revealed.
“I am committed to using every available means at my disposal to gain complete operational security of our border,” Buckingham wrote in the letter.
She told Fox News she fully supports Trump’s efforts to deport every undocumented immigrant – a promise he made the cornerstone of his presidential campaign.
In her letter, Buckingham said the person who previously owned the land refused to allow the government to build the border wall on her property and blocked law enforcement from accessing the land. However, Texas later bought the land for an undisclosed amount and plan to build more border wall on it.
“Right now, it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on,” Buckingham told Fox News. “We could very easily put a detention center on there, a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country.”
Buckingham claimed by refusing to cooperate with Texas’s border policies, the previous owner, “enabled cartel members and violent criminals to sexually abuse migrant women and children.”
The allegation largely mimics rhetoric that Trump and his allies used on the campaign trail to promote Trump’s anti-immigration policies. They falsely claimed the U.S. was being “invaded” by violent criminals, gang and cartel members, and people from jails and “mental institutions”.
He often exaggerated the number of immigrants coming across the U.S. Southern border and used extremely rare instances of crime committed by an undocumented immigrant to fearmonger.
The Trump team provided a statement to The Independent after being asked about the land offer.
“Local and state officials on the frontlines of the Harris-Biden border invasion have been suffering for four years and are eager for President Trump to return to the Oval Office. On day one, President Trump will marshal every lever of power to secure the border, protect their communities, and launch the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrant criminals in history,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman.
The plot of land is located approximately 35 miles west of McAllen, Texas.
Trump has not unveiled an official plan to conduct his mass deportation but said he would declare a national emergency upon taking office to then use the military. The declaration would also allow Trump to direct funding to whatever project he sees fit even if Congress appropriated funding elsewhere.
The president-elect has promised to invoke several federal statutes to force law enforcement agencies to comply with his demands and bypass Congress. That includes the Insurrection Act of 1807 which would allow the military to apprehend immigrants and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 which would remove immigrants without due process.
Stephen Miller, a Trump adviser credited with architecting the Muslim ban during Trump’s first term, told the New York Times last year that part of the new deportation plans included creating “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants.
