Texas has spent $11 billion on border security. Does it work?

Alejandro Serrano
| Texas Tribune

For Governor Greg Abbott, the results of his multibillion-dollar border security initiative are clear.

In a recent television interview, Abbott highlighted a decline in the number of migrants trying to enter the country via Eagle Pass via the Rio Grande after ordering the National Guard to seize a 50-acre public park there. He also noted another statistic: Texas covers more than two-thirds of the U.S.-Mexico border, but has recently seen fewer illegal border crossings than other border states.

“We have a profound impact on stopping the flow of illegal immigration into the state of Texas,” Abbott said in the interview, crediting Operation Lone Star, the border security initiative he launched in March 2021.

Federal statistics back up Abbott’s claim that overall, more migrants were encountered by Border Patrol agents outside Texas in the first three months of this year. During fiscal year 2023, Texas averaged about 59% of migrant encounters along the southwest border. During the first half of fiscal year 2024, which began in October, Texas accounted for an average of 43% of migrant encounters.

However, immigration and foreign policy experts say the reasons driving the recent shift – and any changes in migration patterns in general – are much more complicated. And they said the numbers are likely to change again if history offers any clues.

“He can, without evidence and without real in-depth analysis, take all the credit he wants — and that’s good for him,” said Tony Payan, director of the Baker Institute’s Center on the United States and Mexico, a nonpartisan policy research firm. organization based at Rice University in Houston. “But those of us who have been looking at immigration for a long time would probably be much more skeptical.”

The number of migrants attempting to enter the country illegally between legal ports of entry reached historic levels in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.4 million migrant apprehensions at the country’s southwest border for the fiscal year ending September 2022.

Texas shares about 1,200 miles of border with Mexico and is home to five of the nine Border Patrol sectors along its southern border – the El Paso sector also includes the 186 miles of New Mexico’s border. Since at least 2019, Border Patrol agents in Texas sectors have recorded more encounters with migrants each month than in the rest of the sectors.

Until last fall.

In November, non-Texas sectors recorded about 104,000 encounters with migrants, compared to about 87,000 in Texas’ five sectors. Texas saw more encounters than the other states in December, but the trend reversed in January, when Border Patrol agents in Texas encountered fewer migrants than agents elsewhere along the southern border, Border Patrol figures show.

The biggest drop in encounters occurred in the Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, where agents recorded more than 70,000 encounters with migrants in December, compared with fewer than 20,000 in each of the first months of 2024, according to figures from the Border Patrol. Meanwhile, the San Diego and Tucson sectors have shown consistent increases since last summer until recent small dips.

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The recent trend comes three years after Abbott began flooding the Texas-Mexico border with state troopers and National Guard soldiers through Operation Lone Star.

Since then, the state has committed more than $11 billion in taxpayer dollars to Operation Lone Star, said governor’s spokesman Andrew Mahaleris. That money also paid for the transportation of more than 100,000 migrants to cities like New York and Chicago, installed 70,000 rolls of concertina wire along the border and started construction on a military base that will reportedly cost more than $400 million.

“The vast majority of the southern border of the United States is in Texas, and because of Texas’ efforts to secure the border, more and more migrants are heading west to illegally cross the border into other states,” Mahaleris said in a statement. “Until President Biden takes action and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue to use every tool and strategy to respond to this crisis created by Biden.”

Immigration experts say it’s difficult to measure the impact of the border buildup in Texas because it’s just one part of a complex, global phenomenon: Migration is increasing around the world. In countries like Honduras and Venezuela, poverty, lack of jobs, political instability and organized crime have pushed people to the US in search of a better life. This often means paying smugglers and cartels who often change their smuggling routes.

“We’ve always thought of the border as a simple line on a map, but it’s more than that, it’s an ecosystem,” said Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., who worked for the Border Patrol for 22 years and retired as the Tucson Sector. chief in 2011. “An ecosystem that is affected by variables very close and very far away, and very far away, is also outside the US, right? It’s not just about Mexico, but you’re also talking about other countries.”

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Some immigration policy experts credit the Biden administration for the recent decline, pointing to a winter visit by top U.S. officials — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — to Mexico to discuss immigration with their Mexican counterparts . Top U.S. and Mexican officials have touted agreements from such closed-door meetings.

Immigration experts pointed out that concerns at the U.S.-Mexico border have subsided in the first three months of the year — a period that would normally see an increase as migrants try to make the journey before the summer heat arrives.

Another big change last year was the expiration of Title 42, a policy launched by the Trump administration at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed U.S. border officials to quickly remove migrants into Mexico without allowing them stand to apply for asylum.

Many of those migrants would try to cross again — and each time they were stopped, it was counted as an encounter, increasing the number of encounters, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University who has researched the border and relations between the US and Mexico. .

According to Border Patrol data, encounters with migrants decreased immediately after the end of Title 42, but increased again toward the end of 2023.

“How are we going to attribute the increase or decrease to Border Patrol or to Operation Lone Star?” said Correa-Cabrera. “It’s difficult. It’s impossible to know.”

Disclosure: Rice University is a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism.

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