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Governor Cooking Up Numbers
Renders Biden Attacks Baseless
Capitol Inside
May 8, 2022
Governor Greg Abbott contended on Saturday that the state police and military mission that he's directing at the Texas border has culminated in more than 242,000 migrant apprehensions - an increase of more than 2,000 since his last update five days ago.
But there's no way for Texas voters to know if the Republican governor's numbers are exaggerated or fictional. Abbott asserted last week that Texas has been forced to take action to secure the border because Democrat President Joe Biden refuses to do so in a glaring abdication of his responsibility as the nation's chief executive.
The public record shows just the opposite. Based on the public record at the Department of Public Safety, the Texas National Guard and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Abbott's initiative Operation Lone Star failed to apprehend anyone who entered the state illegally in the past week without the federal government's assistance.
The state is making no effort to back up the governor's grandiose rhetoric and alarming statistics beyond occasional photos and videos that show small groups of migrants who Operation Lone Star has rounded up with arrests for trespassing on private property.
Abbott tweeted on May 3 that Operation Lone Star had apprehended more 239,800 migrants since its inception last year in March. The governor's Twitter post four days later ramped the total up by more than 2,200 - a number that's 550 higher than the Border Patrol's cumulative count of migrant apprehensions in Texas all of last week.
The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 1,600 people in Texas illegally in the month of May when it gave the state Department of Public Safety credit for assistance with the capture of five migrants in joint operations in the past week. The discrepancies between Abbott's claims and the public record - especially when compared to the Border Patrol tally - create the appearance that his camp made up the numbers on apprehensions in an attempt to justify the spending of billions of dollars in taxpayer resources on an effort in futility that's an obvious campaign ploy.
The governor and Operation Lone Star officials have posted a steady stream of promotional videos that show heavily-armed OLS forces guarding the border on the north bank with troops and trucks while helicopters hover above high-speed boats on the waters as assurances that the state has the situation under control on the Rio Grande.
Abbott at the same time has been pondering whether to invoke the wartime powers act with a declaration that Texas is on the brink of an invasion from Mexico with Biden set to cancel the Title 42 immigration restriction policy on May 23. The dueling messages give the impression that Operation Lone Star has been successful in a quest to secure the border on one hand and waving the white flag with the other.
A check of the record that's available to the public effectively renders Abbott's allegations of Biden dereliction to be baseless and false. There's no credible evidence up to now of Operation Lone Star having any consequential effect on illegal immigration into Texas. Abbott's mission had almost nothing to show for it last week.
Federal agents alerted the DPS last week to a suspicious vehicle that the state police chased before it crashed into a Border Patrol vehicle en route to the river in Brownsville where the driver escaped into Mexico. The Border Patrol shared the credit with the DPS for the confiscation of 486 pounds of marijuana that the elusive drug runner left behind in the Rio Grande.
The USBP recorded the arrests of nine transnational gang members, two convicted sex offenders and a murder suspect from Honduras apprehension in the past seven days. Federal agents seized more than 71,000 prescription pills, 16,000 pounds of ammunition and 34 more pounds of marijuana in the same period. The USBP spent several days last week searching for the bodies of boys age 7 and 9 who were presumed to be missing after being swept away by the river currents.
Operation Lone Star fared slightly better the previous week when DPS touted the arrest of 29 migrants for trespassing in Kinney County in a tweet on April 30. The DPS put nothing on social media, however, about a group of migrants that it captured on camera traveling on private property in Texas near the border. But DPS confirmed to a far right news reporter that they all got away. |
