4 minute read
Operation Lone Star: A South Texas Tsunami
By Justice Beth Watkins
For the five fiscal years before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fourth Court averaged approximately 381 criminal filings per year. Appellate filings—especially criminal filings—decreased as a result of the pandemic.
Recently, however, the Fourth Court has seen a significant increase in criminal filings, even over our pre-COVID numbers. In the three quarters from September 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, the Fourth Court received 539 criminal filings. If that rate continues for the last quarter of the fiscal year, we expect to receive a total of 674 criminal filings in Fiscal Year 2023. That is more than 77% above our pre-COVID average of criminal filings.
After examining our docket, we can say confidently that this surge in criminal filings relates to Operation Lone Star (OLS)—the mission Governor Greg Abbott launched in March of 2021 to “devote additional law enforcement resources toward deterring illegal border crossings.” A number of state offices and agencies were asked to work together to address the corresponding increase in state felonies and misdemeanors, including the Office of Court Administration, the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, and the Border Prosecution Unit, a group of seventeen elected District Attorneys along the border who prosecute border crimes.
OLS has led to a dramatic increase in prosecutions, especially of criminal trespass charges, along the border. That, in turn, has led to substantial uptick in appellate filings. In the first three quarters of this fiscal year, the Fourth Court has received 216 criminal filings arising out of OLS. Of those filings, 157 have come from Kinney County. To put that number into perspective, from 1997 through 2017, the Fourth Court received a total of six criminal filings from Kinney County.
The burden of handling criminal appeals arising out of OLS falls disproportionately on the Fourth Court of Appeals. This is because the Fourth Court’s jurisdiction along the border includes Val Verde, Kinney, Maverick, Webb, Zapata, and Starr counties, plus many other counties in which OLS is in effect. OLS filings typically come in waves. In addition, these filings are often accompanied by motions for emergency relief— often without any notice beforehand. As a result, timely processing of this volume of filings requires a Herculean effort from our clerk’s office.
The Fourth Court has kept up with this tsunami of filings. As of May 31, 2023, the court has decided or otherwise disposed of ninetythree OLS filings. As was previously described in this column, the court issued an en banc opinion in Ex parte Dominguez Ortiz, concluding a noncitizen who was charged with criminal trespass had not presented a cognizable pretrial habeas claim. No. 04-22-00260-CR, 2023 WL 1424651, at *4–6 (Tex. App.—San Antonio Feb. 1, 2023, no pet.). Following Dominguez Ortiz, the court disposed of a handful of cases with similar issues. Since then, the court has also disposed of eighty-four original proceedings, often concluding that the mandamus relator or habeas applicant was not entitled to relief.
We expect to receive a total of 674 criminal filings in Fiscal Year 2023. That is more than 77% above our pre-COVID average of criminal filings.
The parties’ arguments are not static, and as our court has decided issues, litigants have been hard at work developing new arguments in trial courtrooms across the state. As their cases make their way to the Fourth Court, and even without additional resources to handle this unprecedented surge in filings, the Fourth Court is hard at work to fulfill its mission to timely issue well-written, well-reasoned opinions in accordance with the law.
