Houston Chronicle Sunday

Political theater at border has outlived usefulness

- ERICA GRIEDER

Operation Lone Star has once again suffered a tragedy.

Spc. Bishop Evans, 22, drowned after leaping into the

Rio Grande to help two men who were struggling in the river, which is wide in the Del Rio Sector and often looks deceptivel­y calm.

His body was recovered Monday, after a dayslong search that left many questions remaining.

At a Wednesday legislativ­e hearing, leaders of the Texas Military Department responded to a joint investigat­ion by Army Times and the Texas Tribune, which found that

Evans was not equipped with a flotation device. Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer, who was appointed Texas adjutant general in March, said Operation Lone Star personnel currently have access to just 43 flotation devices, although more have been ordered and should be available by mid-July.

“If you’re not trained to be a boat crewman, you’re not supposed to be getting into the water,” Suelzer said when questioned by state Rep. Eddie

Morales, a Democrat whose rural southwest Texas district covers hundreds of miles at the border. This includes the stretch where Evans, of Arlington, had been stationed.

The policy of course ignores the reality that most service members and law enforcemen­t officers are not likely to stand idly by if they see a person visibly struggling, regardless of whether they have the appropriat­e training and even if they would put themselves at some risk by rendering aid.

Indeed, Suelzer said, that was the case here: “Sgt. Evans was a human being. He saw a human being drowning and he jumped in the water to save him.”

This is not the first time Operation Lone Star, the costly exercise in political grandstand­ing launched by Gov.

Greg Abbott in March 2021, has been shaken by a terrible loss. Army Times reported in

December that over the preceding two months, four soldiers involved with the operation had died by suspected suicide.

Furthermor­e, a number of the 10,000 men and women deployed to the border or otherwise providing support to the operation have reported issues with morale, housing, or even with being paid on time.

All of which raises the question of why we’re sending service members to the border — an extremely dangerous place, to hear Republican­s tell it — with so little considerat­ion and without even basic safety devices. As Morales noted, water rescues are a regular occurrence along the river, as are accidental drownings.

The most plausible answer to that overarchin­g question — sadly, outrageous­ly — is that Operation Lone Star is a political operation designed to highlight President Joe Biden’s weaknesses and raise Abbott’s national profile.

A similar case could be made about Abbott’s brief, ludicrous border shutdown last month, which began when he announced that Texas Department of Public Safety officers would be conducting their own inspection­s of every commercial vehicle traveling north through the state’s ports of entry.

These were redundant inspection­s. The federal government, via Customs and Border Protection, inspects northbound truck traffic already. And the costs of this stunt were immediatel­y obvious, as trucks sat idle for hours on the Mexican side of the border, in some cases with their produce wilting.

Direct costs to Texas were estimated at $4.2 billion, according to an analysis by the Perryman Group. And those are just the costs that can be readily quantified: Mexico this week announced that a new rail line that it’s building will connect with New Mexico rather than Texas, citing Abbott’s border shutdown as the reason.

As for the gains? Well, DPS didn’t interdict any drugs or apprehend any migrants as a result of the exercise.

The agency did, however, identify some trucks that need repairs. And the governors of four neighborin­g Mexican states agreed to do more to improve security on their end, although some of the measures these governors agreed to undertake were already implemente­d, or on the books.

These agreements in hand, Abbott proceeded to declare victory.

“Texas did more in two days to secure the border than Biden has done in 15 months,” Abbott tweeted last week.

Perhaps Abbott’s Mexican counterpar­ts could have been induced to make the same concession­s via discussion­s about our shared concerns, rather than a ham-handed move that cost Texas billions of dollars while inflicting pain on our state’s largest trading partner and southern neighbor.

In fairness, under certain circumstan­ces there may be a productive purpose to this sort of political theater. If an issue isn’t receiving the attention it deserves from Washington, for example, state-level action may help put it in the spotlight.

Are we in such a situation, though? Biden’s weaknesses when it comes to border security are practicall­y self-evident. He has struggled to find a course that rejects the draconian enforcemen­t policies of the Trump administra­tion, most cruelly exemplifie­d by the family separation­s policy, but that recognizes the legitimate national security and public health concerns presented by drug and human traffickin­g.

Unfortunat­ely, it does not appear that a serious discussion of the issue is forthcomin­g from Austin. Abbott on Friday did, however, announce plans to shift roughly half a billion dollars from other state agencies to keep Operation Bottomless Pit going.

There is never a good reason for a governor to play politics with people’s lives. And with Democrats such as Biden bungling this situation, Abbott’s moves don’t even seem that shrewd, politicall­y.

It appears that the governor is willing to put his unquenchab­le political ambitions over the livelihood­s — and lives — of the people he represents.

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 ?? Joel Martinez / Associated Press ?? Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken
Paxton have used the border to lift their political profiles.
Joel Martinez / Associated Press Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have used the border to lift their political profiles.

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