The DPS invasion of the Valley is a Texas initiative and waste of taxpayers’ money.

DPS invasion of the Valley is a Texas initiative and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Take a drive along U.S. 83, say from Laredo to McAllen, and you’d think a presidential procession was massing along the busy thoroughfare that runs roughly parallel to the Rio Grande. Every half mile or so, you’ll pass yet another black-and-white SUV of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Or one will pass you. The troopers are ubiquitous and, to locals in particular, their presence is irritating, if not infuriating.

Ask folks who drive 83 regularly, and, with a grimace and a shake of the head, they’ll likely tell you that they make sure they’re using cruise control and are always on their guard. They’ve heard the stories, or they’d had the experience of being stopped for some absurdly minor infraction — tires touching the right-side white line, for example, or the ever-useful broken taillight — because the bored DPS trooper had nothing else to do.

“Troopers go down there, and they sit in their car for 10 to 12 hours, watch movies, sleep. They don’t want to be down there,” a former trooper told a reporter for Austin-based KXANTV. And now, thanks to Texas lawmakers this session, another 250 are headed southward, ostensibly to help enforce border security. More likely they’ll be comparing notes with their buddies on the tastiest carne guisada in the Rio Grande Valley or the chain motels serving the best free breakfasts.

The DPS invasion of the Valley is a Lone Star State initiative, but its waste and excess mirror a misguided federal immigration policy, a policy exacerbated by the nativist impulses of Donald Trump’s White House. That cruel policy didn’t originate with Trump, although his bloviations about “big, beautiful walls” and his profound ignorance about Mexico and U.S-Mexico relations underscore that impression. In truth, the broken immigration system now in place — of which border security is an integral part — had its origins in post-9/11 efforts to make sure such a tragedy never happened again.

Texas, a state that knows something about border ties with its southern neighbor, was the soul of sanity just a few years ago. It was then-Gov. George W. Bush who once noted that “fearful people build walls; confident people tear them down.” It was Gov. Rick Perry who spoke up for Dreamers (and in doing so nearly capsized his presidential campaign). These days, at a time when Texas could be a badly needed model for border relations, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and their tea-party cohorts in the Legislature have chosen to fan the flames of fearfulness.

The trooper increase lawmakers approved last week is a continuation of the absurdly labeled Operation Secure Texas, a massive $800 million initiative that matches what lawmakers allocated two years ago. As in 2015, the DPS will get the bulk of the funding, about $694 million.

That amount includes not only money for additional troopers, but also for boats, planes and helicopters, even though most of the arrests the DPS makes along the border are not for bordersecurity crimes. Of the more than 3,781 DPS border arrests between June 2014 and September 2016, only 6 percent were for felony drug possession, 1 percent for human smuggling. Most have been for drunken driving and misdemeanor drug possession. We’re all for getting drunk drivers off the road wherever they are, but we fail to see what that has to do with border security.

Lawmakers’ excuse for wasting taxpayers’ money is that the Obama administration abdicated its responsibility to secure the border. They seem not to have noticed that Barack Obama is no longer president, that apprehensions along the border are at a long-term low or that the Metroplex and other populous parts of Texas have fewer troopers patrolling the roadways. Lawmakers also ignore the fact that Texas border cities — communities that have long welcomed new waves of Hispanic immigrants and have greatly benefitted from international trade — are among the safest in the nation. (They were safe, by the way, before the DPS invasion.)

Texas lawmakers will be going home in a few days — without having fixed the state’s broken system of public school finance, among other obligations. But they’ve kept their border boondoggle going. Valley innkeepers and restaurateurs may be pleased, but there’s not much reason for the rest of us to be.