Bangkok Post

Texas hails new border base for troops

>> SAN ANTONIO: Gov Greg Abbott of Texas said on Friday that the state would begin building a forward operating base in the border city of Eagle Pass for up to 2,300 soldiers to support the state’s efforts to limit the number of people crossing illegally from Mexico.

While Texas has been deploying National Guard troops and state police officers up and down the state’s border since 2021, the move to create a 32-hectare base camp cements a large law enforcemen­t infrastruc­ture in the region.

“This will increase the ability for a larger number of Texas military department personnel in Eagle Pass to operate more effectivel­y and more efficientl­y,” Mr Abbott said in his announceme­nt. The camp, Mr Abbott added, “will amass a large army in a very strategic area”.

He did not say Friday how much money the state was spending to build the base, but added that the financial impact would be “minimal” in view of the state’s existing expenditur­es to house those deployed on the border.

The camp will save on hotel costs for the existing deployment. And it will presumably make way for additional states that are sending troops to help patrol the border as part of a widening rift between GOP governors and the federal government over border enforcemen­t.

Mr Abbott has been testing the legal limits of what states can do to enforce immigratio­n law. Several of his GOP cohorts have sent their own National Guard troops to help patrol the border in Texas, where record numbers of migrants have been crossing without authorisat­ion in recent years.

The GOP governors of 25 states signed a statement in January vowing to stand alongside Texas in its confrontat­ion with the federal government, which they say has not been doing enough to enforce existing laws.

Over the past two years, the Abbott administra­tion has been engaged in a multifacet­ed crackdown at the border known as Operation Lone Star. The multibilli­on-dollar initiative includes the arrest of migrants who touch private property; the deployment of state police and the National Guard; and the use of helicopter­s and other military-style equipment.

Texas has also been busing thousands of migrants out of the state, overwhelmi­ng cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, whose leaders have decried the arrival of thousands of migrants without work permits and places to stay.

Texas has also added a number of barriers along the border, including a string of large orange buoys and concertina wire along the Rio Grande. Mr Abbott said more would be added.

The state is defending many of these initiative­s in court on several fronts.

A federal judge in Austin, Texas, heard three hours of arguments Thursday over whether to halt the implementa­tion of a new law, set to go into effect March 5, that would allow state and local police to directly arrest migrants without legal permission as a prelude to removing them from the country.

The Biden administra­tion contends that the law conflicts with federal law and violates the Constituti­on, which gives the federal government authority over immigratio­n matters. The state countered that its law mirrored federal law in most respects but represente­d a necessary further deterrent to unauthoris­ed migration.