The Orbán Playbook
Hungary’s “Illiberal Democracy” on the Rio Grande. Texas' Operation Lone Star is not Unique, It's Part of a Global Movement
For almost three weeks in August, an encampment of asylum seekers in Matamoros, Mexico, came under aural assault by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Troopers stationed on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande blasted the encampment, from about 300 feet away, with recorded messages, in Spanish and Mandarin. The messages played on a loop, repeatedly warning that it is illegal to cross the river. The troopers also aimed sirens and spotlights at the encampment.
One U.S. volunteer in the camp called the endless recordings and spotlights torture, while the head of a Mexican nonprofit said it kept people up all night. Also, no one speaks Mandarin in the camp, they said, so the recording sowed confusion among the asylum seekers, who are predominantly Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers. “People were very stressed. These were very heavy days,” said Glady Cañas, president of the Matamoros-based nonprofit Asociación Ayudándoles a Triunfar. “They would put the sirens on, the lights would go on, and a megaphone would be giving an announcement for hours.”
At the moment, said Cañas, there are more than 500 people living in the Matamoros encampment, located near the banks of the Rio Grande. The camp lacks running water and toilets, and there is very little food. Most of the people are from Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Honduras, and Ecuador. And they are waiting to apply for asylum through the CBP One app, which has been plagued with errors. The app works only on newer smartphones and with good Wi-Fi, both of which are nonexistent in the camp. “Some get an appointment right away, but others can be here for three months or even nine months waiting,” Cañas said.
In the meantime, in Brownsville, just across the river, Texas governor Greg Abbott has lined the riverbank with coils of razor wire, state troopers, and the National Guard. Since Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in 2021, he has imprisoned thousands of migrants for criminal trespass, installed a floating buoy barrier reinforced with circular saws on the river, and laid down hundreds of miles of razor wire. He’s also placed shipping containers, lined with razor wire, along the Rio Grande as a makeshift barrier. And he’s building miles of border wall.
While this might seem uniquely cruel, Abbott is closely following the authoritarian playbook of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, and current European thought leader for MAGA Republicans. Donald Trump calls Orbán a friend, and White supremacist Tucker Carlson spent a week covering him for his former show on Fox, later making a “documentary” about Hungary called Hungary vs. Soros: Fight for Civilization. For the last two years, the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference, founded in the U.S., has held a “Woke Free Zone” conference in Budapest.
By studying Orbán’s crackdown on asylum seekers and its progression over the last several years, you can see exactly where Abbott’s Texas is headed (and DeSantis’s Florida, for that matter).
In a speech in July 2022, Orbán argued that European and non-European people should not mix. Europeans “do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” he said. After the speech, one of Orbán’s longtime advisers quit in protest. “I don’t know how you didn’t notice that you were presenting a pure Nazi text worthy of Goebbels,” his adviser wrote in her public resignation letter. Orbán’s speech was widely condemned in Europe, and it further alienated him from other Western leaders.
But in Texas, just days after his speech “worthy of Goebbels,” Orbán was welcomed with a standing ovation at the CPAC conference in Dallas, where he touted his “zero migration” and Judeo-Christian nationalism. “The globalists can all go to hell,” he boasted. “I have come to Texas.”
On the same CPAC stage that day, Abbott followed with similar xenophobic talking points. He bragged about Operation Lone Star and encouraged conference-goers to donate to a state-run website to pay for bussing migrants out of Texas. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick echoed Orbán’s White Christian nationalism: “The framers did not write the Constitution,” he said. “God wrote the Constitution. We are a Christian nation.”
The Authoritarian, Anti-immigrant Playbook
As thousands of Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees fled war zones in 2015, Orbán blocked their way north with shipping containers covered in razor wire and built a border wall. He deployed police and military to detain asylum seekers, then bus them out of the country. Since then, Orbán has characterized refugees and asylum seekers as “invaders,” especially if they are Muslim. And he’s passed laws criminalizing migration, arrested humanitarians who assist refugees, and made unauthorized border crossing punishable with up to 10 years’ imprisonment. He’s also recruited “border hunters” to join police and soldiers in patrolling and detaining any asylum seekers who might cross into Hungarian territory.
This is a model for Texas Republicans’ proposal to create “Border Protection Units,” which are essentially a civilian posse given government protection and carte blanche to hunt migrants. And there are echoes of Orbán everywhere in Operation Lone Star, from the criminal trespassing arrests of asylum seekers to the “invasion” rhetoric, which Abbott so often uses when he talks about migrants at the border. Even the shipping containers covered in razor wire in Eagle Pass resemble those on the Hungarian-Serbian border, where Orbán’s government has lined the forest with loudspeakers warning refugees in several languages not to cross into Hungarian territory. Just as Abbott did earlier this month from the banks of the Rio Grande in Brownsville.
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, and a Republican presidential candidate is also desperate to burnish his strongman persona by persecuting asylum seekers. Like Abbott, he is closely following Orbán’s authoritarian playbook, detaining asylum seekers and shipping them across the country and forming his own “civilian defense force.” DeSantis has also sent Florida’s highway patrol to participate in Operation Lone Star. Recently, he released video footage of Florida officers surveying the Matamoros encampment in the distance, where hundreds of asylum-seeking families are stranded.
In the encampment, people are under intense pressure, according to Brownsville resident Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, who cofounded a nonprofit called the Sidewalk School to provide educational programs, shelter, and other services to asylum seekers in Matamoros and nearby Reynosa. Local criminals have attacked people in the camp, many of whom fled violence in their home countries. “Everything is against you,” Rangel-Samponaro said, “and you’re sleeping outside and being robbed. And then to add to that, the state of Texas is torturing you by shining lights, playing recordings, and sounding sirens while you try to sleep. So, people wonder, ‘Why are they crossing the river?’ Because any sane person would want to be as far away from that shit as possible.”
The Border Chronicle contacted Texas DPS for comment on the sirens, recordings, and lights, but the agency did not respond. Cañas said due to multiple complaints in Matamoros, the Texas state police have stopped the practice for now.
Unsurprisingly, Orbán’s cruel tactics against asylum seekers, which have included kidnappings and beatings, do not deter people from coming. They are fleeing wars, after all. But Orbán has used his poisonous populism to solidify his power, just as Abbott and DeSantis are trying to do. It began with asylum seekers in 2015, but now in Hungary there is no independent media or judiciary, and the LGBTQ community and immigrants have become targets for persecution as the prime minister has consolidated his control over the government. Antisemitism is also on the rise.
This is the playbook that MAGA Republicans are following in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere. We already know how it ends. Orbán’s “illiberal democracy,” which is being lionized by Trump, Abbott, and others, is nothing new. In fact, it’s very old. It’s called fascism.
First two videos taken by asylum seekers at the Matamoros encampment in August 2023. The third is the Hungarian-Serbian border in 2022. Video courtesy of Lighthouse Reports.
Thank you for the global context. It’s astounding and appalling that Abbott is getting away with this. Has the DOJ lawsuit stalled?