Looking Back on a Year of Operation Lone Star Defense

September 20, 2021, U.S. immigration policy was thrust into scrutiny when photographs of Border Patrol agents seemingly whipping Haitian noncitizens in Del Rio, Texas went viral. At that time, James Wong–a former deputy assistant commissioner for internal affairs at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told NPR that he was most troubled by a cultural shift within the organization where agents saw themselves as more a paramilitary force than a law enforcement agency. Speaking to NPR’s Joel Rose in 2021, Wong stated, “I’ve had Border Patrol agents in the past tell me that they will not retreat, and they will not give up one foot of American soil. They view these people as the enemy.”

Just months before those images shocked the nation, in March of 2021, Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star (OLS)–an attempt to curb immigration along the border between Texas and Mexico. Under Governor Abbott’s plan, when a noncitizen is apprehended at the border, rather than being processed under the federal immigration system, noncitizens are instead arrested by Texas law enforcement and charged under the state’s criminal codes and, if unable to afford cash bail, sent to prison where they may wait weeks to months before their trials. Often, these noncitizens languish in Texas prisons under charges of trespass, a misdemeanor-level offense.

Many of these noncitizens have not committed a crime and, under international conventions and federal law, have the right to request asylum. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid is an essential partner in assisting noncitizens unfairly caught up in our state’s criminal state with getting their criminal charges resolved and moving forward with their lawful claims to asylum. By September of 2021, just six months since the initiation of OLS, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid had already taken on 500 cases of noncitizens arrested under the program. By April of 2022, as OLS rounded its first anniversary, TRLA was responsible for representing over one-tenth of all the noncitizens arrested through the state’s program. Not only is the sudden influx of clients a challenge TRLA has risen to meet, but because these noncitizens have active criminal and immigration court cases under OLS, these cases are unduly complex. Making this even more complicated, many migrants are deported before trial, requiring them to defend against criminal charges in other countries or resulting in arrest warrants and bond forfeitures where they are unable to appear for required in-person proceedings.

Criminal charges are not the only distinction between Operation Lone Star and the state’s earlier immigration policies. In the past, noncitizens at the border were detained by Border Patrol agents, under OLS, and were arrested by troopers from the Texas State and National Guards and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Early into the state’s program, Governor Abbott sent 500 troops from the Texas National Guard to the border. Nearly five times as many National Guard troops were dispatched to the border as a part of OLS by September 2021. By November of that same year, the Texas Tribune estimated that the number of troops at the border had ballooned to 10,000. James Wong’s figurative assessment of Texas’ border policies was literal: Operation Lone Star has effectively created a military response to noncitizens seeking asylum at the Texas border.

This heightened military presence at the Texas border comes with a hefty price tag for taxpayers: estimates by Texas Tribune, Pro Publica, and the Marshall Project forecast that OLS spends 2.5 million dollars each week. By the end of 2022, Operation Lone Star spent an estimated 4 billion dollars towards a program whose claims to protecting Texas are dubious: often, the claimed arrests and drug seizures “success stories” coming from OLS are from criminal cases unrelated to the border.

The client impact we can confirm is that there is an entirely separate and unequal criminal justice system for migrants, and TRLA’s OLS response has been to intervene and provide clients with a strong defense, protecting their due process rights under the constitution. Our attorneys have successfully defended appointed clients by arguing case dismissals, pushing back against unconstitutional equal protection and discrimination issues, protecting clients’ rights to defend themselves and to bond, advocating for language access in court, and so much more.

The failure of Operation Lone Star highlights the need for a more comprehensive and nuanced approach that considers human rights, due process, and broader social impact. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid has emerged as a vital advocate for noncitizens unjustly lost within the state’s criminal justice system under OLS. We fight for an environment that upholds every individual’s innate worth and potential, regardless of nationality, as we collectively shape a brighter future for our nation and those who seek to call it home.

DEFENDING THOSE IMPACTED BY OPERATION LONE STAR

1,181 OLS clients served

$70,872 obtained on behalf of survivors of a violent crime