American taxpayers can expect to take a bigger hit from Donald Trump's deportation plan as a consequence of higher costs the U.S. will face transporting migrants to Mexico and other destinations from cities across the country where Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been busing them for the past two years.
The people who pay taxes in the Lone Star State should brace for a double-whammy after being forced to foot the bill for the free rides that Abbott has given migrants from the Mexican border to places like New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. The Abbott busing program had a price tag of almost $150 million by March of this year after hauling more than 100,000 migrants to selective cities across the country at the expense of the taxpayers in the nation's second largest state.
Trump has vowed to declare a national emergency so he can deploy the U.S. military to American cities to search for residents who aren't U.S. citizens in a deportation roundup that could make President Dwight Eisenhower's Operation Wetback in the 1950s seem minor league.
Texas is eager to help despite the potential for economic calamity that wholesale deportations could fuel from cities on the border to the food service business and agriculture in particular in a state where the largest beef processing plants and other labor-intensive industries depend on migrant workers as the lifeblood. The president of Mexico could retaliate by shutting down maquiladora plants, blocking traffic into her country from the north or taking other actions that would cripple trade between the U.S. and the nation she leads. Trump's tariffs could pose a substantial threat to the border economy and send prices soaring north of the Rio Grande.
Abbott's truck inspections at border bridges took a $4 billion bite out of the Texas economy during a nine-day span in 2022. Abbott said the drastic action was necessary to force Mexican border governors to sign agreements at Austin photo ops with vows to enforce border security for the state south of the Rio Grande. The pacts had no effect on illegal immigration into Texas.
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham sought to give the Trump plan an assist when she offered to let the incoming president use a 1,401-acre ranch that the state owns in Starr County as a staging facility for "the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation's history."
Buckingham - a former Republican state senator who's an Austin eye doctor - said she was prepared to negotiate an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security for the transformation of the ranch near McAllen into a detention and processing center. But Buckingham didn't say whether she would seek compensation for the state from a federal government that's run by Trump.
Buckingham said the ranch's former owner had blocked construction of the Texas border wall by denying law enforcement access to the property. But the state land boss said she granted an easement for the land less than 24 hours after the General Land Office acquired it.
But Texas may have competition to be the Trump deportation hub based on a USA Today report on Wednesday that raised the specter that Florida would be ground zero for the president-elect's push to rid the country of foreigners who aren't official citizens. The story noted that 5 percent of the population in the Sunshine State - or more than 1.1 million residents - do not have legal permission to be in the U.S.
Abbott announced on Wednesday that
he's ordered forces at the border to install more buoys in the Rio Grande - presumably in the Eagle Pass area that he's converted into the hub for the state's border security mission. Abbott is beefing up the Texas operation despite plunging rates of migrant apprehensions on or near the border here since President Joe Biden's administration imposed significant restrictions earlier this year.
The number of migrants who federal agents apprehended at Texas ports fell to 27,097 in October compared to 95,729 in the same month a year ago. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that migrant encounters dropped almost 78 percent in the Del Rio sector that's anchored by Eagle Pass in the same time period. The migrant count fell 84 percent in the Rio Grande Valley in the same span while dipping only 10 percent in the El Paso region.
