As Texas targets border arrests, questions linger
Has yet to deter illegal crossings despite claims
EAGLE PASS, Texas — Before settling in New York City like thousands of other migrants this year, Abdoul, a 32-year-old from West Africa, took an unexpected detour: weeks in a remote Texas jail on local trespassing charges after crossing the US-Mexico border.
“I spent a lot of hours without sleeping, sitting on the floor,” said Abdoul, a political activist who fled Mauritania, fearing persecution. He spoke on the condition that his last name not be published for fear of jeopardizing his request for asylum.
Starting in March, Texas will allow police to arrest migrants who enter the state illegally and give local judges the authority to order them out of the country. The new law comes two years after Texas launched a smallerscale operation to arrest migrants for trespassing. But although that operation was also intended to stem illegal crossings, there is little indication it has done so.
The results raise questions about the impact arrests have on deterring immigration as Texas prepares to give police broader powers to apprehend migrants on charges of illegal entry. Civil rights organizations have already sued to stop the new law signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott, calling it an unconstitutional overreach that encroaches on the US government’s immigration authority.
On Thursday, the Justice Department told Abbott that it will also bring a lawsuit unless Texas reverses course on the new law by next week, according to a letter that was first obtained by Hearst Newspapers.
Since 2021, Texas authorities have arrested nearly 10,000 migrants on misdemeanor trespassing charges under what Abbott has called a “arrest and jail” operation: Border landowners enter agreements with the state authorizing trespassing arrests, clearing the way for law enforcement to apprehend migrants who enter the US through those properties.
The arrests have drawn constitutional challenges in courts, including claims of due process violations. More recently, one landowner asked officials to stop the trespassing arrests on the property, claiming authorities never had permission in the first place.
Abbott had predicted the trespassing arrests would produce swift results. “When people start learning about this, they’re going to stop coming across the Texas border,” he told Fox News in July 2021, when Texas-Mexico border crossings reached 1.2 million that fiscal year.
That number has ticked up even higher over the past fiscal year, topping 1.5 million.
“They’re still coming through here,” said Sheriff Tom Schmerber of Maverick County, where Abdoul crossed the border and was quickly arrested in July.
Abbott suggested this month Texas may soon phase out the trespassing arrests as it moves forward with illegal entry charges that can be enforced most anywhere in the state, including hundreds of miles from the border.
The trespassing arrests have been a cornerstone of Abbott’s nearly $10 billion border mission known as Operation Lone Star that has tested the federal government’s authority over immigration. Abbott has also sent an estimated 80,000 migrants on buses to Democratic-led cities, strung up razor wire on the border, and installed buoy barriers on the Rio Grande. Last week, Abbott sent a flight of 120 migrants to Chicago in an escalation of his busing operation.
The mission is visible in Maverick County, where many of the arrests have taken place. Patrol cars are parked every few miles along the two-lane roads leading to the border city of Eagle Pass. Along the Rio Grande, state troopers from Florida, one of several GOP-led states that have sent National Guard members and law enforcement to the border, work in tandem with Texas officials.
Abdoul was arrested in the city’s Shelby Park, a small piece of greenery touching the river with a ramp for boaters. It was the Fourth of July when Abdoul set foot on American soil for the first time. Officers standing nearby asked him a few questions and quickly took him into custody.
He said that he was given small food portions in jail and was so miserable he would say anything to get out. He pleaded guilty to trespassing, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
It’s unknown how many of those arrested on the border for trespassing remain in the country, were deported, were allowed to stay to seek asylum, or had their cases dismissed. But Kristen Etter, an attorney who said her legal organization has represented more than 3,000 migrants on the trespassing charges, said the majority of their clients were allowed to stay and seek asylum.
She said many migrants seek out law enforcement at the border because they want to surrender.
“If anything, rather than being a deterrent, it is attracting more people,” she said.