The rise and fall of border encounters
As Biden took office, U.S. Border Patrol reported a sharp increase in encounters—over 1.7 million in FY 2021 compared to about 400,000 in FY 2020. Encounters continued climbing, reaching 2.9 million in FY 2023. In December 2023 there were over 250,000 deportation or apprehension events in December alone. Following a June 4, 2024 restriction on asylum, southern border encounters fell. During the first months of the Trump administration, encounters virtually collapsed to under 10,000 a month (these being encounters of persons crossing between official ports of entry).
Pre- Operation Lone Star actions by Governor Abbott
In 2017, Abbott signed a law allowing local police to check the immigration status of anyone they arrested, similar to Arizona’s earlier SB 1070. Texas’s version went further by threatening sheriffs and police chiefs with fines or removal if they didn’t inquire about immigration. A federal court halted these penalties.
After President Biden took office in 2021 and moved away from Trump-era border policies, migrant crossings into Texas spiked. Abbott accused Washington of abdicating its duty and vowed that Texas would “not be an accomplice” to federal “open border policies. ”
Operation Lone Star
In March 2021 Abbot declared a disaster in dozens of border counties thereby empowering him to deploy the National Guard to the border. This was the official start of Operation Lone Star. “Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Department of Public Safety today launched Operation Lone Star to combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas. The Operation integrates DPS with the Texas National Guard and deploys air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to high threat areas to deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas.” (Go here and here.)
The Texas legislature first budgeted funds for the undertaking in House Bill 9 in September, allocating funds that eventually by mid 2022 added up to $5 billion. (Go here.) Between May and November, the number of National Guard troops deployed at the border rose from 500 to 10,000.
The trespassing strategy
In 2012 The Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012) had firmly assigned immigration enforcement as the exclusive domain of the federal government. Texas sought creative ways to arrest and remove migrants under state law. Operation Lone Star’s architects hit on a trespassing strategy: charging migrants with state misdemeanors for crossing private land. Abbott’s office enlisted ranchers and landowners to sign agreements granting Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers authority to patrol their properties for border-crossers. Troopers and National Guard were trained to induce border crossers to step onto private property at which point they were arrested for trespass.
Those taken into state custody (often single adult men) were jailed in state prisons converted into immigration detention centers. To be released, defendants had to post a bond averaging $2,700. Once released from state custody, migrants were handed over to federal immigration agents for deportation or asylum processing. The trespassing charge was not lifts, resulting in many persons having been deported could not get their bond back.
In July 2022 Abbott issued an executive order (GA-41) authorizing Texas state troopers and National Guard units to apprehend migrants and return them to ports of entry at the Mexico border. This unilateral “turn-back” policy was in effect a state-driven expulsion without federal involvement. When President Biden halted further construction of Donald Trump’s border wall, Abbott directed Texas to resume building barriers on its own. in late 2022, Texas state personnel installed concertina wire and shipping containers along the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass and seized control of a riverside public park to use as a hardened staging ground, at one point even barring U.S. Border Patrol agents from entering the area.
A dozen Republican governors dispatched their own state Guard troops or law enforcement officers to assist Texas.
Bussing migrants
The idea surfaced in the summer of 2021, when border city officials in Del Rio pleaded for relief from an overwhelming migrant influx. In September 2021, Del Rio housed 15,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, camped out under the international bridge.
A few weeks earlier, Abbott had convened a Border Security Summit in Del Rio, where nearly a thousand local officials, ranchers and residents aired grievances. There was bipartisan support for busing migrants to other major Texas cities. Abbott staff conceived the idea of sending them out of state, to so-called sanctuary cities. In April 2022 the first state chartered buses left Texas for Washington DC. The passengers had signed voluntary waivers in multiple languages saying they chose their destination. Between 2022 and mid 2024, Texas bussed 120,000 persons, to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles.
(Governor de Santis flew some migrants to Martha’ Vinyard, a stunt that Abbott distanced himself from.)
SB 4
In late 2023, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 4 to create a state-level immigration offense. SB 4 made it a Class B misdemeanor on first offense to illegally enter the state from Mexico between ports of entry. Abbott signed SB 4 in December 2023 In February 2024, a federal district judge enjoined SB 4 before it could take effect. As of mid-2025, SB 4 remains tied up in court.
Deputizing state officials
On January 31, 2025, the Trump administration signed an memorandum of understanding with Texas invoking a “mass-influx provision” of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This allowed Texas to deputize state law enforcement officers to act with the powers of immigration agents during an immigration emergency. Texas National Guard troops and state police were granted authority to apprehend and deport migrants directly.
“The Guard authority to act as immigration officers in a State Active Duty status under Title 8. Under this agreement, Texas officials are authorized…to perform specified immigration functions that include investigating immigration violations, arresting individuals for immigration violations, and transporting noncitizens for detention and removal. DHS waived all immigration-training requirements for Guard personnel exercising these authorities. CBP retains the authority to supervise and direct Guard activities.”
Federal reimbursement
The One Big Beautiful Bill has a $12 billion provision designed to be paid to Texas.
Credit: Texas Roundup, by Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, March 17 2025