Migrant Count Vaults in Texas Despite
Governor's Caravan Disrupting Claims
Capitol Inside
June 23, 2022
As Governor Greg Abbott takes credit for disbanding a massive migrant caravan before it reached Texas, the U.S. Border Patrol's apprehension count in May makes it appear like partnerships that he forged with Mexican governors the month before have had no effect on the flow of people into the Lone Star State illegally.
The USBP apprehended a record 139,402 migrants in Texas last month - an 8 percent increase over the tally in April when federal agents rounded up 10,724 fewer people in the state illegally. The Del Rio district where 15,000 migrants had been heading in recent weeks recorded an 8.5 percent jump with 44,388 apprehensions there in May based on the new federal data.
An analysis of USBP data for the entire southwestern border from Brownsville to San Diego shows that apprehensions by federal officers vaulted 16 percent and 10 percent in the El Paso and Rio Grande Valley districts respectively in May. The Border Patrol apprehended 45,909 migrants in the region that's anchored in El Paso in May when the agency logged 34,638 in the Rio Grande Valley district.
The Texas Republican governor coersced a quartet of Mexican counterparts into formal agreements on binational border security operations with an international bridge blockade that spawned chaos, gridlock and economic havoc in border cities for more than a week. After three weeks of attention focussed solely on the backlash from a mass school shooting in Uvalde, Abbott found an ideal distraction with a renewed interest in his prized mission Operation Lone Star, which he's touted on Twitter in posts on each of the past eight days.
Abbott cited an article by the far right think tank called Center for Immigration Studies on June 15 as evidence how the binational pacts that he engineered had culminated in the dispersion of an oncoming wave with 15,000 people who'd been traveling for two weeks in a group that had authorization from Mexico City.
"The bridge closure agreements I reached with Mexican Governors triggered a major operation to head off caravans," Abbott tweeted with the CIS report attached. "Migrants who thought they could easily cross into Texas are now infuriated."
The governor took a detour to Houston on June 16 for a pep talk at a reception that evening across the street from the Texas Republican Convention where he'd passed on the opportunity to speak to delegates. Abbott was back at the border in Mission on June 17 for a victory lap on the caravan's evaporation in northern Mexico. He used an update briefing to take another shot as Democratic President Joe Biden.
"The agreements I reached with Mexican governors are forcing these caravans to disband," Abbott said. "While Biden fails at his most fundamental task of keeping America safe, Texas continues to step up & secure the border."
The governor tweeted a story in a right-wing conspiracy publication called the American Thinker on June 18 to build a case on how he managed to defuse a group with 15,000 migrants. Like the CIS report, the American Thinker piece attributes the caravan's disbanding to tactics employed by state police in Coahuila as part of the deals that the governor there penned with Abbott in mid-April.
"Texas's Gov. Abbott blocks and breaks that gargantuan incoming caravan from Mexico," Abbott said in a Twitter post June 18 that included the American Thinker analysis.
The governor posted a separate tweet later that day with his first updating of Operation Lone Star achievements since May 7 - with significant increases in migrant apprehensions and arrests by state officers since his last accounting about two weeks before the massacre in Uvalde. The statistics that Abbott has trumpeted for Operation Lone Star have not been credible - however - with documented exaggerations, fabrications and no attempt by the state police, military or governor to substantiate the numbers or grandiose claims.
But the U.S. Border Patrol's accounting of apprehensions in Texas in May give the appearance that Operation Lone Star had no measurable effect if any on a rising tide of migrants despite the governor's flattering assessments of the initiative on social media. Abbott brought traffic and trade to a halt at the border with Department of Public Safety safety inspections for nine days before the governors of Coahuila, Chihuaua, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas all agreed in writing to start enforcing border security on their side of the river.
While the USBP logged record numbers of migrant apprehensions in the El Paso, Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio districts in May, the count actually dropped in the region that's based in Laredo last month compared to April. The Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo is located in the northwestern end of the state of Tamaulipas where most migrants have been entering through a USBP district based in Edinburg.
Abbott promoted Operation Lone Star while blasting Biden in a tweet on May 24 before a lone gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Abbott waited until June 12 before resuming the public relations effort for Operation Lone Star on Twitter.
more to come ...
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