Gov. Abbott: Operation Lone Star to continue until next Trump administration takes over

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- One of the top stated priorities for the incoming Trump administration is border security and cracking down on immigration. With billions spent in the last several years and billions more budgeted for state-level border security efforts in Texas, the question now is what will happen to Operation Lone Star.

"It is going to take Trump time to build up the ICE enforcement," Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) said while speaking about school choice priorities in the upcoming state legislative session in Tyler, Texas last week. "It's like what last existed when he was last president, as well as the Border Patrol agents."

In 2021, Abbott declared the Biden administration had let the border become a crisis and was endangering the country. Abbott announced the creation of Operation Lone Star, a joint state effort between the Texas Military Department, Department of Public Safety State Troopers, and a number of other state agencies to provide border security and stem immigration issues.

"The Biden Administration has created a crisis at our southern border through open border policies that give the green light to dangerous cartels and other criminal activity,” said Governor Abbott in March 2021. “Border security is the federal government’s responsibility, but the State of Texas will not allow the administration’s failures to endanger the lives of innocent Texans. Instead, Texas is stepping up to fill the gaps left open by the federal government to secure the border, apprehend dangerous criminals, and keep Texans safe.”

Operations since have spanned the length of the Texas border with Mexico, including a mass migration response exercise held on the border in El Paso last week. Abbott said such operations and efforts such as the installation of razor wire at the water's edge of the Rio Grande will continue until the next Trump administration is fully up-and-running.

"And this is nothing that's going to happen overnight," Abbott said last week. "It's a process to get there. And that process begins with building ice, building Border Patrol agents, removing the criminals first, and then we'll see where it goes from there."

A spokesperson for the governor said earlier this year that more than $11 billion has been allocated for Operation Lone Star since 2021. The most recent state budget covering the 2024-205 biennium included  $6.57 billion to be spent across 11 state agencies on border security.

Abbott says that once federal efforts are ramped up, Texas can wind down the state spending.

"That means that that Texas will have the opportunity to consider re-purposing that money for other purposes," Abbott said. "It could be for education, could be for property tax cuts, sending it back to the people of the state of Texas."

A timeline for that to happen - and what might happen to the infrastructure put in place such as the barbed wire in the El Paso area and beyond - is not clear as of yet.

"We have to be a stop gap effort, as it takes some time to get that in place," Abbott said. "But, I've had private talks with the President and he's going to be stronger and better at securing the border than he was in his first term, which was very strong and effective. He already knows the levers to pull."