Abbott’s big border botch
Ordering National Guard personnel away from their lives and families is always a big ask, so it typically comes with the reassurance that they are dedicated to some necessary cause — say, bolstering a state’s COVID vaccination capacity or cleaning up after a hurricane. What soldiers don’t expect or deserve is to be involuntarily deployed for what amounts to political theater for a gubernatorial campaign, as they have by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his pointless Operation Lone Star, a supposed border security initiative.
Despite border enforcement being a federal prerogative, Abbott has decided that Texas will deploy massive state resources, including both local law enforcement and National Guard troops, to arrest handfuls of desperate migrants for state trespassing charges in the name of public safety. There are now around 10,000 Guard troops deployed at and around the border, most of them called to active duty involuntarily and reportedly doing very little but acting as a backdrop for Abbott’s tough primary campaign.
These forced call-ups for this unfocused mission have had real consequences. According to a report in the Army Times, four servicemembers who’d been called to the mission have died by suicide in the last two months alone, with at least a few deaths directly linked to the hardship of being asked to deploy on extremely short notice (sometimes as little as four days, according to the report). Soldiers described days of purposelessness away from their homes, surrounded by firearms that could make any suicidal feelings easily realizable.
The United States needs smart and effective border enforcement. But play-acting that the border is a warzone has long been a cheap political trick that needlessly frightens voters and harms migrants, many of whom are merely asking for a chance to go through the asylum process, as is their legal right. Now it is also harming the National Guard troops that Abbott is responsible for. It is past time for Operation Lone Star to end, and for the governor to take responsibility for what his immature antics have wrought.