AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday morning asked the Texas Department of Public Safety, or DPS, to deploy tactical strike teams to “support the Trump Administration’s homeland security operations to locate and arrest criminal illegal immigrants in the state.”
Abbott said in a press release issued Tuesday that Texas is expanding operations to assist President Trump’s hard and fast efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.
“Today, I directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to deploy tactical strike teams to work alongside our federal partners to enforce immigration laws throughout the state,” Abbott said in the release. “These teams will coordinate with Homeland Security agencies to track down the thousands of illegal immigrants with active warrants across Texas and deport them from our country.”
Abbott added in the release that the teams will “leverage personnel and resources” to identify and arrest nearly 5,400 illegal immigrants with active warrants from local jurisdictions across Texas.
According to the release, the strike teams include DPS troopers, Special Agents and Texas Rangers, and they will coordinate with federal partners with support from the DPS Aircraft Operations Division and the Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division.
It comes on the same day that DPS Director, Col. Freeman Martin, testified in front of the Senate Finance Committee about his agency’s budget. The agency is requesting more than $3 billion from the state. The biggest ask is for an additional 500 commissioned Troopers to help with staffing issues.
Col. Martin testified that his troopers are facing various threats across the state, including assisting in Operation Lone Star, the state’s effort to secure the southern border. Martin said the increased responsibilities on his troopers and continued deployments across the state are leaving some gaps in patrols.
“We plan these operations but then we pull them off when something else happens, and then you look at TXMAP and you might — between here and Houston you’ll have two troopers out and one’s at the jail with the drunk driver and the other one’s working a crash, so that’s how you can go back and forth from Austin to Houston, TX for months and never see a trooper,” Martin explained to the committee members.
He says the additional troopers will help his agency address a lot of issues. The Texas State Troopers Association is also calling on the legislature to pass the budget request and add the additional commissioned troopers. In a statement, the association’s director, Rohnnie Shaw, said, “TSTA is urging the Legislature to prioritize DPS so our officers can continue to protect Texas communities from existing and emerging public safety threats, including at the border, where cartel violence and terrorism are escalating by the day.”
The DPS Director was also asked about his agency’s costs associated with Operation Lone Star, as the current senate budget proposal is allocating $6.5 billion for border security in the next two years. State Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, questioned if the state should be allocating such an amount of money for the border after President Trump took office and directed the Department of Defense to send U.S. soldiers to the southwest border.
Martin said his agency spends about $2.5 million a week on overtime pay and travel per diem associated with Operation Lone Star. He did tell state senators he believes his troopers will be assisting federal partners even more in their homeland security operations.
On Monday, Abbott also directed the Texas Military Department to deploy the Texas Tactical Border Force to the Rio Grande Valley to “coordinate with U.S. Border Patrol under the Trump Administration to secure the border,” a press release from Abbott’s office stated.
More than 400 soldiers from the force, as well as C-130s and Chinook helicopters, deployed from bases in Fort Worth and Houston to the border where they joined “thousands” of Texas National Guard soldiers to collaborate with U.S. Border Patrol agents, the release said.
Trump on his first day back in office declared a national emergency at the southern border and took several actions to restrict immigration, according to The Hill. He directed the Department of Defense to assist the Department of Homeland Security to obtain “full operational control of the southern border.”
