“An Occupying Force”: Florida Troopers Descend on Texas Border Communities
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“An Occupying Force”: Florida Troopers Descend on Texas Border Communities
“There’s already a massive police presence in border communities under Operation Lone Star,” says Lopez. “People do see it as an occupying force.”
Today’s post is part of a nationwide collaboration among newsrooms called Democracy Day, which will take place on September 15. The intent is to draw attention to the crisis facing American democracy, and provide readers with the context and information they need, and to bring all types of media together to sound the alarm collectively. We’re a little early, so as not to interrupt our normal publishing schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We hope you’ll check out other submissions, which will be published on September 15. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
“An Occupying Force”: Florida Troopers Descend on Texas Border Communities
In August, Carolea Hassard, a rancher in rural Kinney County, on the Texas-Mexico border, saw something unusual at a local gas station: a Florida State Highway Patrol officer filling up his squad car.
“I’m thinking, What is a Florida trooper doing here?” she said. “Then I saw them out on the road too. And I’m wondering, What good are a bunch of Florida cops in Texas?”
The same questions are being asked by border residents from rural Kinney County to Brownsville, Texas. “It’s been stunning to see Florida state troopers in places like Mission, McAllen, and in Brownsville,” said Roberto Lopez, who grew up in South Texas and works for the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project. “There’s already a massive police presence in border communities under Operation Lone Star,” he said. “People do see it as an occupying force.”
This summer, at least 13 Republican-led states, in addition to Florida, have deployed law enforcement and National Guard to Texas. It’s the second time in three years. In June 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott and former Arizona governor Doug Ducey requested police and soldiers under an Emergency Management Assistance Compact, and more than a dozen Republican-led states, including South Dakota and Tennessee, sent equipment and personnel.
In May, Abbott said these deployments were necessary to deter “the flood of illegal border activity invited by the Biden administration.” Contrary to Abbott’s claims, however, Biden has kept active-duty military and National Guard at the border, and he is on track to give more funding to the Department of Homeland Security than any other president before him. Regardless of who is in the White House, the militarization has expanded, while migration has increased globally—not just at the U.S.-Mexico border—due to climate change, war, poverty, and other factors.
Abbott refers to asylum seekers as “invaders” and touts state sovereignty over immigration enforcement actions, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government is in charge of immigration enforcement.
Despite the federal ruling, Abbott has pushed state law enforcement and National Guard into the controversial role of immigration enforcers. Since March 2021, when the initiative started, at least 10,000 soldiers and state police were sent to the Texas border. Their mission is to arrest asylum seekers and migrants on state criminal trespassing charges, then jail them in state-run prisons. Operation Lone Star also has its own state-funded judicial system, which prosecutes migrants for criminal trespass misdemeanors. In addition, Texas is building its own border wall on land deeded by private landowners. Abbott has also installed a floating buoy barrier with circular saws on the Rio Grande. And he’s busing migrants to Democrat-led states.
After two years and $4.4 billion, Operation Lone Star, which is facing several civil rights lawsuits, hasn’t deterred people from arriving at the border, according to the conservative Wall Street Journal. “The area of the border most heavily targeted by Operation Lone Star has seen the most rapid increases in illegal border crossings in the state since the operation began,” the WSJ reported in July. “Thousands of arrests by state troopers under the program have been unrelated to border security, and instead netted U.S. citizens hundreds of miles from the border.”
Political Props
While the massive state-funded initiative has not stopped migration, it has targeted U.S. border residents for harassment and surveillance.
“Whether I’m out taking pictures of birds or trying to document border wall construction, it feels like you are always being watched,” said Lopez.
Drivers have their ID ready and their insurance in order, he said, because they can be pulled over at any time, especially if they have a darker complexion. “I know a person who has been pulled over eight times,” he said.
Recently, he said, his mother, who has a darker complexion, was interrogated for several minutes at an interior Border Patrol checkpoint, while his father, who is lighter skinned, wasn’t asked any questions. They were on their way to a medical appointment.
The Heart of the Republican Primary Voter
Much was made during the last deployment in 2021—four months before the midterm elections—when South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem revealed that her state’s deployment to the border, which would cost more than $1 million, was being paid for by a GOP mega donor from Tennessee.
In 2023, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is lagging a distant second behind Trump in the Republican presidential polls, has deployed the most troopers of any state, sending more than 1,100 cops and soldiers to Texas. He also sent a deployment in 2021, and has since then activated his own state guard, which has been mired in controversy as DeSantis has become increasingly authoritarian and antidemocratic.
Barrett Marson, a Republican political consultant, said that for any Republican with political aspirations, sending law enforcement and soldiers to the border is a winning strategy. “Governor Noem, she’s often mentioned as vice president material, or maybe 2028 potential,” he said. “Certainly, politics is part of her calculation.”
Border security is a top issue for Republicans, he said. “It’s at the heart of the Republican primary voter. And it’s also good for the general election.”
Voters are continually inundated with stories about people lining up at the border in Mexico, he said. “They’re hearing that millions of American taxpayer dollars are needed to deal with the influx,” he said. “And they want it fixed.”
By focusing on the border, DeSantis is trying to boost his campaign ratings. “He’s got a lot of other issues he’s dealing with, but this is a big political winner,” said Marson.
The deployments may help failing Republican campaigns, but at what cost to the safety and civil rights of border residents?
Lopez said the combination of ignorance and firepower is dangerous for both migrants and border communities. Already, two Texas National Guard soldiers have shot migrants—one who was standing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and the other in Mission, Texas.
“When you think about Florida State Police or National Guard, they come to our communities and may not know much about the region but have been spoon-fed the rhetoric of an invasion,” Lopez said. “We’ve seen Border Patrol agents in the past kill locals, as well as white nationalists shooting up places like El Paso. It is extremely concerning. Because they’re walking around with so much power and authority. It can lead to some dangerous interactions.”
Much of Operation Lone Star is carried out in rural locations like Kinney County, Lopez said, where there’s little oversight. And it’s unclear under what policies out-of-state law enforcement are operating under when they’re policing border communities. “When it comes to supporting state law enforcement, we often hear legislators say they’ll be providing logistical support, or administrative support, and won’t directly be apprehending and arresting people,” he said. “But we could see a situation where a Florida law enforcement agent goes well above and beyond what is probably their authority when apprehending an immigrant, and there’s no one there to document it.”
The Border Chronicle contacted the Texas Military Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety and requested information about use-of-force policies and others that out-of-state police operate under while working in Texas, but neither agency responded.
“I don’t know what they’re up to,” said Hassard, of the Florida Highway Patrol in her community. “But it worries me. What kind of impact are all these police going to have on residents, especially if you’re Latino or Black? This is a small community and people can be fearful. I’m a big proponent of speaking out so that others feel comfortable speaking out. It’s the only way we’re going to fight the intimidation.”
This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
“An Occupying Force”: Florida Troopers Descend on Texas Border Communities
On May 22, 2023, I took a group of students and faculty from George Mason University on a border wall tour that included SpaceX (one month after Elon Musk nearly killed us all in Laguna Madre on April 20). There were chunks of the launch pad still lying around and Texas state highway 4 was damaged severely to the point that there was only one working lane on a two-lane highway. We eventually got to see the obscene, junky SpaceX command post sprawl that hadn't been destroyed on April 20. There was really nothing to see there but fences hiding the damage and trucks with long flat trailers to haul off the post-explosion trash, debris, and presumably, dead wildlife. When we finally arrived at the end of Highway 4, we were at Boca Chica beach. We walked and I drove some of the students and faculty (4 wheel drive 4Runner) to Boca Chica beach where the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. After we all arrived there, two people clad in military gear/kevlar, etc. walked up to our group and asked what we were doing there. One was a Texas DPS trooper, the other was from Florida. Both were heavily armed.
Where the water flows at this estuary, it is shallow. And several people fishing from Mexico in the Rio Bravo were enjoying the beautiful, sunny day. Boca Chica is the most beautiful beach in all of Texas - except for the awful SpaceX launch pad eyesore. Otherwise, the area is serene and gorgeous.
The students and faculty (and I) were upset that these two armed police offers - who really have no business asking us anything on a public beach in a state park - had the audacity to ask us what we were doing there! The GMU folks more or less told them that they were simply observing a pristine area that didn't have a border wall. It was a surreal standoff. Also, the beach narrows at a choke point where the troopers with their pickup truck tried to cut off any return back to the bus that brought them there. Their vehicle was by an old unmarked pickup truck that the two state police offers drove (it was rear wheel drive) and could go no further in the white sands of Boca Chica beach, but still essentially, it looked as if it was an attempt to hem in the group.
After our group took pictures, spoke to the Mexicans who were fishing, and explored the area, we decided to leave. As I loaded the first group into the 4Runner, we passed the troopers walking back to their truck that may have been stuck in the sand. I passed them through a narrow gap, almost hitting their unmarked truck. I went back and forth a few more times, ferrying members of the group back to their bus that was on the last bit of asphalt of State Highway 4. Eventually the troopers disappeared after they managed to get their truck out of the sand.
Later, I took the same group to Brownsville to see the Texas National Guard and more Texas DPS patrolling the levees with their military vehicles. Concertina wire was laid everywhere. In the Rio Grande at 13th and Levee street, the GMU students could see refugees swimming in the Rio Grande to cool off and collect water to wash their clothes. Later, we walked over to Gateway International Bridge, where Haitians, Venezuelans, and Cubans were waiting to be picked up by Team Brownsville volunteers to be directed to buses at the Brownsville bus station and to take bus #50 to get to the Brownsville Airport. One Haitian man spoke to the GMU students and noted that he'd been 6 years in Chile and it took 6 months to get to South Texas - passing through the Darian Gap - with his intact family.
I think these students experienced something through serendipity that they may have never thought could happen on a one-day excursion in bucolic south Texas. I believed they were quite surprised.
I take your point well. The number comes roundly out of studies that have tried to debunk the the thesis that all immigrants are bad and that they bring criminality with them. The theme is carried forward by politicians who say they are criminals when they illegally cross the border outside of established border stations. The studies roughly analyzed criminal records that determined that the immigrant populations were less likely to commit crimes in the early years of their stays than established US residents and citizens. The number was roughly 3 per cent versus 6 per cent. The 45,000 are out of 1.5 million who have been arrested since 2020, with the about half a million got-aways included in that number. It is fair to ask for references and I shall endeavor to get that information for everyone. It makes for a better communication. How many times do we wave our arms and say that over 90 per cent of whatever is okay. In this case 97 per cent of the immigration population do not have statistical criminal intent. I wish somebody would pay us to dig out the gritty details in those numbers so that it could be a passionate full time dedication. I try but like all of us the day job is important for the family. And yes to your other questions.