Texas Border Operation Captures Half a Million Illegal Immigrants, Thousands of Felons

The Biden administration’s failure to secure the Mexican border forced Texas officials to establish a security initiative that has endured heavy criticism from Democrats and the media despite its success in apprehending hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants—including thousands of criminals—and seizing millions of lethal doses of fentanyl. It is known as Operation Lone Star, and it was launched by Governor Greg Abbott in March 2021 as the illegal immigration crisis gripped his border state. Under the program, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas National Guard pick up the slack for the federal government, which is charged with protecting the famously porous southern border but has failed miserably to do so. Operation Lone Star works to stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people into Texas, and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry.

This month the state published an update on the security initiative’s work. Since it was put into place, over 507,200 illegal immigrants have been captured and more than 41,500 criminal arrests have been made with more than 36,900 felony charges filed. Additionally, Texas officials have transported over 100,000 illegal aliens to sanctuary cities throughout the country that openly welcome and protect migrants. New York received the largest chunk—42,000—of relocated migrants caught entering Texas illegally, followed by Chicago (34,400), Denver (18,000), Washington D.C. (12,500), Philadelphia (3,400) and Los Angeles (1,500). “Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps created by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border,” reads the statement announcing the latest figures. “Every individual who is apprehended or arrested and every ounce of drugs seized would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and the nation due to President Joe Biden’s open border policies.”

Among the examples offered in the latest update is the arrest of an illegal immigrant from Mexico by the DPS after a brush team working the Rio Grande Valley saw the man get picked up by a human smuggler while crossing the Rio Grande River on a jet ski. After vetting the migrant, Gabriel Gutierrez-Perez, the law enforcement agency found that he was wanted in Florida for sexual assault on a child, sexual battery on a child and child molestation. In another case a DPS trooper busted a smuggling operation during a traffic stop after observing two passengers, illegal immigrants, attempting to conceal themselves in the rear of the vehicle. Two more migrants were in the car’s trunk and the driver was arrested and charged with smuggling of persons. All four were Mexican nationals. During a separate traffic stop a DPS trooper noticed multiple people crammed in the rear of a large sports utility vehicle. It turns out five illegal immigrants were smuggled in the vehicle and the driver and passenger were both charged with smuggling of persons. The passenger was also charged with evading arrest and resisting arrest.

Texas is not the only state to take matters into its own hands in the absence of federal immigration enforcement. A handful of others, such as Arizona, Montana, and North Dakota, have enacted measures to help mitigate the mess caused by the president’s open border policies, though Texas has been the most proactive and its initiative has had the biggest impact. As we delve deeper into the Biden presidency, the situation is only getting worse, leaving local governments on their own to deal with national security threats, elevated crime, and other detrimental impacts of lawlessness along the southern border. In fiscal year 2021 a then record-setting 1.73 million illegal aliens entered the country through Mexico only to be topped the following year with 2.4 million. In fiscal year 2023 a ghastly 2.48 million illegal aliens entered the U.S through Mexico and, unbelievably, 2024 is on track to surpass that. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) records recently published in a congressional report show that the agency recorded 256,094 encounters nationwide in February alone, accounting for the worst February for illegal immigration in decades.