Texas Governor Announces New Military Base Camp on Border

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Friday that the state would begin building a progressive operating base in the border city of Eagle Pass for up to 2,300 troops, creating the most significant military infrastructure yet to support the state's efforts to limit the number of people. crossing illegally from Mexico.

While Texas has deployed National Guard troops and state police officers along the state border since 2021, the move to create an 80-acre base camp strengthens a major law enforcement infrastructure in the region and signals Texas' commitment to a security role that previously belonged almost exclusively to the federal government.

“This will enhance the ability of a greater number of Texas Military Department personnel in Eagle Pass to operate more effectively and efficiently,” Mr. Abbott said in his announcement, as he was flanked by a line of armed National Guard members . The camp, Mr. Abbott added, “will gather a large army in a very strategic area.”

Mr. Abbott did not say Friday how much money the state is spending to build the base, but added that the financial impact would be “minimal” given the state's existing spending to house those deployed at the border.

The camp, which will include a 700-seat dining facility, gym, laundry and medical services, will save on hotel costs for the existing deployment. And it will likely make way for new states sending troops to patrol the border, part of a widening rift between Republican governors and the federal government over border enforcement.

Mr. Abbott has tested the legal limits of what states can do to enforce immigration law. Several of his Republican cohorts, including the governors of Florida and Georgia, have sent their own National Guard troops to help patrol the border in Texas, where record numbers of migrants have crossed without authorization in recent years.

The Republican governors of 25 states signed a statement in January pledging to stand with Texas in confronting the federal government, which they say has not done enough to enforce existing laws.

For the past two years, the Abbott administration has been involved in a multi-faceted effort at the border known as Operation Lone Star. The multibillion-dollar initiative includes the arrest of migrants who touch private property, the deployment of state police and the National Guard, and the use of helicopters and other military equipment.

Texas has also transported thousands of migrants out of state, overwhelming cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, whose leaders have decried the arrival of thousands of unauthorized migrants without work permits and residency.

Texas has also added a number of physical barriers along the border, including a series of large orange buoys and concertina wire along the Rio Grande. Mr Abbott said on Friday that more would be added.

The state is defending many of these initiatives in court on various fronts.

A federal judge in Austin heard three hours of arguments Thursday over whether to halt implementation of a new law, set to take effect March 5, that would allow state and local police officers to directly arrest unauthorized migrants as a prelude to removing them from the country.

The Biden administration argues that the law is contrary to federal law and violates the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal government authority over immigration matters. The state countered that their law mirrored federal law in most respects, but provided a necessary further deterrent to unauthorized migration.

The federal government is also challenging the placement of a 1,000-foot barrier in the middle of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass. Lawyers for the federal government said the large orange buoys violated a federal law governing navigable rivers. Late last year, a federal appeals court sided with the Biden administration and ordered Texas to remove the river barrier while the case proceeded. So a bigger jury the order reversed.

A separate case working its way through the legal system concerns the ability of U.S. Border Patrol agents to cut or remove concertina wire installed by Texas authorities on the banks of the Rio Grande. The federal government has argued that Border Patrol agents should cut the cord to help migrants who may be in danger trying to cross the river.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit last year, claiming the agents destroyed state property by removing portions of the wire.

That legal battle reached the Supreme Court last month, where the justices, without giving their reasons, ruled that border agents could cut or remove the wire if necessary while the case was pending in the lower court.

Mr. Abbott's announcement on Friday about a new base camp comes as the number of migrants entering Texas from Mexico has fallen 50 percent in the past month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it encountered migrants between ports of entry 124,220 times in January, up from more than 249,000 the month before.

In Eagle Pass, a city that has become the epicenter of the immigration enforcement wars between the state and federal governments, numbers have dropped from 6,000 in a single day to a handful per day.

But Mr Abbott said on Friday he expected crossings to rise again this spring.

The guards at the base will have “the ability to be able to build that barbed wire barrier more quickly,” he said, part of the state's effort to send a message to migrants that “the wrong place to go is the state of Texas. .”