Low morale plagues troops as they keep eyes on border
Guardsmen part of Operation Lone Star also cite pay woes
SOUTHEAST OF DEL RIO — Two Texas National Guard soldiers faced the sunset at the end of another long overwatch shift last week near the Rio Grande, bundled in winter gear as bitterly cold gusts kicked dust off U.S. 277.
Troops pulling duty in the brush country on the border mission ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott say they spend up to 14 hours a day in a usually fruitless search for migrants they call “IAS” — illegal aliens. They might see one or two while doing without one of the basics — a toilet.
They can call for a shuttle to get to a restroom, but that takes a while. Rather than relieve himself in the open, one specialist said, “I just hold it for 12 hours straight.”
It’s not the only thing these GIS resent. They cited operational changes they could not describe because of security concerns. They said they have no clue when the mission will end — their duty tours here run eight to 12 months.
Sergeants and officers acknowledged the truth of another complaint: Some have gone without pay.
The guard has said the pay problem has been fixed, but one soldier manning his post last week said he still gets hundreds of dollars less per paycheck than he should. Several said two unpaid GIS have gone on strike, refusing to work and staying in their border area housing. The pair have not been punished, one soldier said.
“There’s leadership issues, morale issues. Morale is lower and keeps getting lower,” a specialist said. “Lower-level leadership is really tight and solid. Upper-level leadership is questionable.
“The mission has stayed the same,” he continued. “The way we’re doing it has changed. It’s having a negative effect on soldiers. That’s why morale is really
low.”
The guard’s sprawling border operation, called Operation Lone Star, is currently being reorganized, said Col. Rita Holton, the Texas Military Department’s director of communications. It’s a process “primarily looking at where personnel are located, how many are in each location, restructure of chain of command and ensuring the tasks such as logistics support centers are in the best places,” she said via email.
The mission will last “as long as necessary” to respond to Abbott’s disaster declaration on the border, and every one of the roughly 10,000 soldiers deployed or supporting the mission is being paid, Holton said. About 1,250 out of 1,330 pay problems reported in the past four months — mainly caused by human error during data entry — have been corrected, she said.
One officer, who spoke on background, said he’s been told there are 6,500 soldiers deployed for Operation Lone Star, about 20 percent of them volunteers.
That would be a stark contrast to past border operations in which GIS asked to be here. Soldiers said some personnel were yanked out of civilian jobs or had to quit college, and others have been turned down for the college tuition assistance they were promised when they joined the guard. (Holton said tuition assistance depends on a funding stream, separate from guard operations, that only the Legislature can make sufficient.)
A number of soldiers followed public affairs guidance and declined to be interviewed. Several who spoke were comfortable being identified only by their rank or a generic reference to their status as an officer or noncommissioned officer — but never by name, with two exceptions.
When the San Antonio Expressnews got a rare but brief opportunity Tuesday to embed with the guard for a tour of observation posts and newly installed fencing on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, a pair of GIS commented favorably about the mission with a public affairs officer standing nearby.
One of them, Spc. Shante Iselin, said she enjoys her job observing and reporting migrant traffic from high ground with a good view of the river. Armed with an M4 carbine, a magazine inserted, she said she was one of the soldiers who reported having paycheck problems.
“In my case, like getting shorted. You were supposed to get paid for X amount of days, and you only got paid for a few days and then you just make sure that your chain knows and they work it,” said Iselin, 29, of Burkburnett, a town near Wichita Falls.
Soldiers can phone creditors, “tell them your circumstances, and typically bill collectors, they understand when you’re deployed and you’re in the military. … And they work with you,” she said. “We get reassurance from our leadership and it helps us feel better because quite a few of us had pay issues, but it got worked out, and it got worked out quickly.”
Spc. Robert Carrier, 35, of Boerne, an eight-year veteran, said he likes the camaraderie of the mission, supporting other agencies on the border and the idea of “Texans helping Texans.” He knows people who haven’t been paid, he said, adding, “but eventually they fixed it. Everybody’s working hard to get everybody paid correctly.”
By Wednesday, with the presence of journalists known to commanders in the Del Rio and Eagle Pass areas, most troops declined comment. One soldier took a reporter’s phone number but pointedly noted that his bosses were just down the road.
Benefits, costs
Operation Lone Star, a response to a surge of migrants in spring 2021, has since been expanded. It was the latest escalation of Texas Guard activity on the border going back decades, missions generally emphasized by Republican governors during the administrations of Democratic presidents.
It included “deploying over 10,000 Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers,” erecting temporary barriers and “a wall” to deter crossings, and awarding more than $52 million to border communities for law enforcement and prosecution activities, said Nan Tolson, a spokeswoman for Abbott.
The operation’s “encounters” with more than 186,000 migrants have produced 10,000 arrests for “border-related” crimes and more than 208 million doses of fentanyl seized, she said.
Holton had the guard’s portion of those numbers: “Approximately 100,000 illegal migrants apprehended and referred to partner federal and state law enforcement agencies,” 9,000 of whom were “returned to Mexico,” and more than 350 “referrals to law enforcement partners.”
Guardsmen have built more than 8 miles of “temporary barrier,” have deterred criminal activity and “are making a significant difference,” she wrote. “Their service matters and our agency’s leaders are committed to supporting them.”
The wall, or barrier, is a hurricane fence with razor wire built on stretches of private land that gives DPS troopers a basis to arrest and jail migrants for trespassing. Some district attorneys have reduced their cooperation with prosecutions that have overwhelmed local jails and justice systems.
The Texas Guard is easily found in this part of the state. A few troops are posted along Vega Verde Road in Del Rio, standing a lonely watch along the river.
Abbott’s tall fence runs for 3 miles on one side of the road, past run-down, abandoned homes and RVS, roaming dogs and some nicer residences. Where the barrier ends, rolled fencing and aluminum poles await installation.
Outside of town, along U.S. 277, the occasional green or desert tan Texas Guard Humvee can be spotted on high points. More gun trucks and their crews are visible in the shadow of the Eagle Pass International Bridge, parked between rectangular containers to form a barrier. The idea is to block a repeat of last September’s mass movement of some 12,000 asylum-seekers into Del Rio.
That influx made national headlines, and though corralled by federal agents within weeks — with asylum claimants dispersed or forced back to Mexico to await the process — it became Abbott’s basis for expanding the Texas Guard’s border operations.
Some soldiers say they believe Abbott is responsible for the accusations coming from his political rivals, both Republican and Democrat, that the mission’s goals and timing were designed to further the governor’s re-election bid this year.
One officer said Abbott apparently didn’t ask the guard’s commander, Maj. Gen. Tracy Norris, to develop a plan to help support the DPS and Border Patrol before launching the operation.
“I think it’s 100 percent political from top to bottom,” the officer said. “It didn’t start with, ‘I want the … guard to be a force multiplier for the border agents.’ This started with, ‘I’m sending 10,000 soldiers,’ because that was the directive.”
Giving the governor a political talking point is “really all it’s good for,” he said.
Tolson said Abbott “had no choice but to step up and address this crisis in the wake of President Biden’s inaction.” She said Abbott “initiated a comprehensive border security plan and launched Operation Lone Star to combat the smuggling of people and drugs.”
‘Understandably’ angry
Not all the soldiers interviewed were sure the guard has fixed the pay problems. One said his most recent paycheck shorted what he was owed. Another said he was paid late, the money finally arriving the week before he spoke.
One GI said he knows a soldier who has “massive pay issues” and had to borrow money from his mother to meet his bills. Another got a loan from a friend. A third soldier said he’s dipped into his savings and that when he asks his command what is happening with his paycheck, he is told, “They’re going to fix it.”
A soldier standing next to him said, “They always say that.”
A sergeant said a fellow NCO is still waiting to be paid but that programs in the guard can help. The two soldiers who have refused to work have serious financial commitments, the sergeant said — one has a baby and must pay child support, and both have mortgages. They were angry, he said, adding, “Understandably so.”
Sarcastic memes on Instagram have become an outlet for the real-world stress on the border force. As the largest of all 54 National Guard organizations, the Texas Guard recorded nine suicides in calendar year 2021, the most since 2018, with two of the GIS assigned to the Texas-mexico border. The issue came up among a few soldiers interviewed last week.
In Eagle Pass, an officer discussing how he handles psychological issues with soldiers said GIS have a chain of command and fellow soldiers they work with. If a problem is uncovered, it’s often found by observant junior leaders at the unit level, the officer said.
“We have a lot of focus on ensuring that the resources that are available are known about, from the chaplain to the behavioral health office to Army substance abuse programs to any type of issue that we think a soldier might acquire a resource, even financial,” he said.
Asked how often morale issues arose among troops, the officer said that was “hard to quantify.”
“I can say that there’s not a greater incidence of morale issues in comparison with this current border duty than there was on my recent deployment to Africa, or there was on the deployment to Iraq,” the officer said.
Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston told Hearst Newspapers that 1st Sgt. John “Kenny” Crutcher committed suicide Nov. 12 after his temporary hardship waiver expired, requiring his return to duty as he cared for his wife after an emergency surgery, and for her disabled brother.
“I could not try to plan something more incompetent than this. I’ve never seen an operation be so screwed up,” he told the newspaper.
Featherston, a 20-year National Guard veteran, posted a video to his Twitter page that shows a dark, cramped trailer with 36 bunk beds packed together. “Why do hundreds of #Operationlonestar #Soldiers have #COVID19?” he asked.
But soldiers didn’t much complain about their living conditions, which can be less than optimal overseas.
The issue of being involuntarily called up weighs on some soldiers, but not all. One said that, while he didn’t volunteer, “I answered the call” even though he had a new job — one he’ll be able to keep.
Others said it’s a problem not only for GIS who drill one weekend a month while immersed in their civilian lives — it could create problems with retaining soldiers.
“In the National Guard in general you shouldn’t deploy troops involuntarily unless you have to, and there was no ‘have to’ here,” said the officer who was the most critical of the operation of any of the dozen service members interviewed for this report.
Some soldiers say there is no morale problem. One who had not been employed before joining the mission said he liked “pretty much everything” about it and that morale was “pretty good.” The private first class declined to say if he volunteered or was ordered up.
Others used single words to answer questions about their morale.
“Irritated,” one said. “Disappointed,” said another, adding moments later, “Most people who I would say were thinking about re-enlisting definitely will not after this.”
Holton, the guard spokeswoman, said “our retention rates are the highest we’ve seen in more than a decade” and that any attempt to predict the operation’s effect on retention was speculation.
The mission
A sergeant with a wife, kids and a life in his community was among some who wondered about the mission’s purpose.
“It’s supposed to be a crisis, and I just hope that our time is well spent out here and there’s a legitimate reason we should be here,” he said.
In the beginning, guardsmen saw “some decent numbers” of migrants crossing the border, the sergeant said. But lately, it has “dwindled drastically,” he said, adding, “I don’t know if we need this much manpower out here.”
Iselin, the soldier from Burkburnett, saw it differently.
“I feel like we have purpose down here. A lot of people, I think a majority of the United States, they read headlines about Gov. Abbott and activating us along the border, and I thought it was for political gain as well, when I first started,” she said.
“But being down here on these points and seeing the numbers, the influx of immigrants coming over every single day, having to call up all these crossings, it is a legitimate problem,” Iselin said.
An NCO said he was disgusted that the guard’s work wasn’t leading to more deportations and called the mission “a misappropriation of funds.”
“It’s catch and release,” he said. “If you go to the Stripes (gas station) in the middle of (Del Rio), you’ll see between two and 50 migrants a day. We’re not doing anything out here.”
Migrants gather at the convenience store after being processed by federal agencies, waiting for a bus to take them elsewhere.
Another soldier working near a long hurricane fence at an Eagle Pass pecan orchard said guardsmen there were buoyed by visits from locals, as well as the Border Patrol and DPS, who brought food during the holidays.
He demurred when asked if he was familiar with the larger controversy surrounding the border mission, saying, “For that, I’m not following it or would have to refer you to the Texas Military Department.”