Texas state troopers deployed by Abbott stopped 8,721 human smugglers

Breaking News: Gov. Greg Abbott‘s (R-TX) bold decision to surge state troopers to the state’s border with Mexico two years ago has resulted in thousands of human smuggling attempts being thwarted and a shocking revelation of how many people have slipped past Border Patrol, according to a Washington Examiner investigation.

Thanks to the Texas Highway Patrol officers, known as troopers, who made 8,721 traffic stops that involved a vehicle suspected of transporting illegal immigrants from the border deeper into the United States between Jan. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2022, we now know that the state’s billion-dollar push to enhance police presence has been a game-changer. The data produced through a 2022 public information request of Texas Department of Public Safety records shows that the state troopers discovered an additional 39,100 illegal immigrants smugglers had attempted to transport from stash houses and fields near the border to cities including Houston and San Antonio. Of that number, roughly 900 were unaccompanied children.

Smugglers and illegal immigrants caught by troopers would otherwise have disappeared into the interior of the U.S. had it not been for the state’s billion-dollar push to enhance police presence, as Border Patrol agents were pulled from the field and inside facilities to process immigrants over the past two years, the DPS said in a statement.

“Were it not for Gov. Greg Abbott’s leadership and Operation Lone Star, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, as well as gang members, human traffickers, sex offenders, thousands of weapons, and over 373 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl, would have made their way into towns and cities across this state and country with little in the way to stop them,” DPS spokesman Travis Considine said.

As illegal immigration at the southern border surged in the weeks after President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the Republican governor launched the Operation Lone Star initiative, which dispatched 10,000 state and local law enforcement, as well as state National Guard soldiers, to more than 100 counties along the state’s 1,250-mile border with Mexico, including counties 100 miles north of the border.

The influx of manpower, Abbott said at the time, filled in gaps where Border Patrol agents had been pulled from the field to transport, care for, and process illegal immigrants in custody.

“You can’t swing a dead cow without hitting a smuggling load,” Sheriff Brad Coe said of border adjacent Kinney County in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “They say, ‘Oh, the border’s secure.’ I have to call bulls*** on that.”

The state trooper deployment was meant to add another layer of law enforcement and beef up the defensive line behind federal agents and local sheriffs as massive organizations known as cartels worked on both sides of the border to shuffle immigrants over the international line and into the hands of drivers in the U.S. recruited on TikTok and Snapchat to pick up and transport immigrants from the border.

One border sheriff, Joe Frank Martinez of Val Verde County, said data given to his office by Border Patrol revealed many illegal immigrants were getting through the border without getting stopped.

From March 1 through March 15, 2023, Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio region apprehended 12,705 illegal immigrants. Border Patrol observed an additional 6,300 people crossing but was unable to intercept them, Martinez said. It was these “gotaways,” the illegal immigrants who slipped past federal agents, who later loaded into getaway vehicles and were pulled over by state troopers further up the road.

The Texas DPS South Texas Region’s Twitter page showcases hundreds of videos and pictures of vehicle pursuits. DPS declined to outline what driver behavior troopers look for when they make an initial stop, such as speeding or out-of-state license plates on a rental car.

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