Abbott’s Operation Lone Star must end
It’s the least the governor can do for National Guard troops demoralized by his leadership.
When Gov. Greg Abbott first ordered 500 members of the Texas National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border in March, Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston, a 20-year National Guard veteran and senior enlisted leader, dutifully accepted the mission. A few weeks in the Rio Grande Valley, after all, was hardly an exotic post. The National Guard has had a presence on the border since 1989, conducting patrols and counter-narcotics operations among countless other missions.
Yet weeks into that initial deployment, Featherston started hearing whispers from fellow leaders that Abbott was planning a significant ramping up of guardsmen on the border. Featherston was puzzled. While the number of migrant border crossings had steadily increased since the beginning of the year, he believed there was no unique threat that warranted such an extreme surge in troops.
“People have been coming across that border, drugs have been coming across that border since there was a border,” Featherston told the editorial board. “Inside the command group, it was common knowledge that this was just Gov. Abbott doing his political thing, trying to be like Trump, you know, ‘Build a wall.’ ”
In August, state lawmakers buttressed Abbott’s border sheriff cosplay with nearly $2 billion in border security funds over two years. The Texas Military Department, which oversees the state’s National Guard, received $311 million to deploy an additional 1,800 soldiers to the border. By November, Abbott was beating his chest in interviews about the 10,000 National Guard and Department of Public Safety troopers on the border carrying out Operation Lone Star — the official state mission to arrest and jail migrants on state charges and erect border fencing on privately owned land.
But what was surely meant to be a show of strength for Abbott’s reelection campaign — and a profile boost for an executive whose presidential ambitions are well known — has steadily devolved into a disaster that is drawing withering criticism from Abbott’s Republican primary opponents. The sheer number of guardsmen Abbott ordered to the border meant that many troops with hardship exemptions — for such things as caring for sick relatives and newborn babies or starting new careers — were denied and forced into deployment. Tuition benefits have also been cut and the state has struggled to pay soldiers on time.
Living conditions for some of the guardsmen stationed at the border appear to be closer to refugee camps than barracks. A video Featherston posted on his Twitter page showed a cramped trailer with 36 beds packed in like sardines, and he told the board that even basic necessities such as bathrooms are absent. The Army Times reported last month that troops are chafing at what they perceive as “a lack of purpose” to their mission. One junior soldier assigned to observation posts at the border told the Army Times that they mostly just sleep in their Humvee.
Even more troubling is a string of suicides and suicide attempts among National Guard troops. Since November, four guardsmen have taken their own lives , raising questions about the mission’s indefinite timeline and involuntary deployments.
Featherston, who retired from the National Guard in November, said he was particularly distraught to hear that one of his soldiers, 1st Sgt. John “Kenny” Crutcher, committed suicide on Nov. 12 after time ran out on his temporary hardship waiver to care for his wife, who had just had emergency surgery, and her disabled brother. Featherston began speaking out against Operation Lone Star shortly afterward.
“I could not try to plan something more incompetent than this,” Featherston said. “I’ve never seen an operation be so screwed up.”
Rather than offer a morsel of accountability for the suicides, pay delays and general low morale of the troops, Abbott responded to his critics by deflecting blame. When pressed about the guardsmen during a press conference in San Antonio on Tuesday, the governor engaged in an insolent round of “what about-ism,” calling it “offensive” to play politics with a military life lost and inexplicably pointing to the number of suicides in the military “under the Biden administration.”
“Why are they silent about that?” Abbott said. “The answer: they’re just playing politics. The life of a soldier, far more valuable than the words of a politician playing politics.”
The hypocrisy is staggering. Playing politics is exactly what Abbott is doing when he routinely slams President Joe Biden for mythical “open border policies” when Biden has, in fact, left in place President Donald Trump’s “Chapter 42” policy that allows for many migrants to be immediately expelled.
Abbott’s whole approach to the border problem is flawed. Throwing up chain-link fences on some private ranches will not stop people desperate enough to trek thousands of miles through harrowing conditions to ask for asylum. Simply throwing migrants in overcrowded local jails on trespassing charges won’t deter them, either. Nor will profligate spending of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars remove the incentive for gangs and drug cartels to profit off of trafficking migrants.
But treating National Guard troops like his own collection of toy soldiers isn’t just wasteful — it’s cruel. Not to mention ineffective: border encounters actually increased during the month of November, when the National Guard had its heaviest presence on the border, according to the most recent Customs and Border Protection data.
Operation Lone Star embodies the toxic mix of shortsighted policies, arrogance and naked ambition that have defined Abbott’s second term as governor. We have no illusions that Abbott will do the right thing and put an immediate end to this political charade that’s wasting taxpayer dollars, tearing apart military families for no good reason, and now, even costing lives. But the least Abbott could do is acknowledge the problems, promise to address them, and show some small sign that he even gives a damn.