Saw that last night, before the hapless Trump sycophants in the House went on vacay, Roger Williams (25th District) introduced a bill to pay back Texas for Operation Lone Star to the tune of 4 BILLION dollars. This after the hubris of House Republicans to not take up the proper border security bill from the last month. Fox News
A GOP House lawmaker has introduced a piece of legislation that aims to reimburse Texas for the nearly $4 billion in expenses it incurred to secure the southern border in recent years.
Titled the “Operation Lone Star Reimbursement Act,” the measure was introduced Thursday evening by Texas Republican Rep. Roger Williams and would, if successful, reimburse the state for the combined $3,726,400,000 it spent on activities related to securing the southern border from 2020 through 2023.
“The Federal Government is primarily responsible for securing the borders of the United States at and between ports of entry,” the bill reads. “Due to the lack of action by the Federal Government, the State of Texas has been forced to continually appropriate funds to secure the southern border of the United States.”
So, don’t the other 49 states get to have a say whether their pet projects get bailed out, too? That last part of his comment, incidentally, is a lie. “Due to the lack of action by the Federal Government”.. Also, look how much money has been wasted by Crook Showboater Ken Paxton using taxpayer money to fight the federal government.
Let’s look at what Roger Williams HAS done, besides refusing to vote for border security recently (and he’s probably with the other House republicans on vacay now). All some good wind out of his mouth about securing the border but not; interesting to note that he has a bill dated Jan 23, 2024 in which he wants to give Texas the authority to secure the Southern Border. Um, because Texas does NOT have the authority, otherwise, what the heck has Ken Paxton been fighting about and why is Traitor Greg Abbott fighting the Supreme Court of the United States? No, Texas just up and decided to go fight the Federal Government, Confederate style (thought we were the UNITED states, but apparently not to Greg Abbott) and now his cronies want the federal government to come bail him out of all the money he spent.
Whose idea was it initially to fight the federal government, who is THE entity that deals with immigration legally and constitutionally, bus migrants out of state while padding the pocket of his buddy Wynne Transportation, call what’s going on an invasion even though it is not, and divert money from the prison system for Abbott’s pet project, as well as benefit a guy who thumbed his nose at a recent Supreme Court decision telling him to knock it off with the razor wire? Oh, it was the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, with the complicit help of the Texas Legislature.
Let’s review: When did Operation Lone Star start to occur? The spring of 2021
This time, Abbott is circumventing the federal immigration system altogether. Through disaster declarations, executive orders, and massive increases in state funding, he has enabled state troopers to arrest thousands of people in border counties for offenses like criminal trespassing and human smuggling. Abbott is also handing out state grants to several border counties that participate in the operation.
Since many of the people apprehended can’t afford to pay bail and local jails in the border counties are too small to hold all of them, the state repurposed two former South Texas prisons into makeshift jails. Those who do manage to get released usually go straight to immigration authorities and eventually get deported if they lack proper documentation.
Abbott recently claimed that the initiative has led to “over 340,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 23,000 criminal arrests, with more than 21,000 felony charges reported.” But more comprehensive data indicating where these arrests occurred, the outcomes of the resulting criminal cases, and how much they’re actually related to Operation Lone Star have been difficult to come by.
According to figures from the Texas Department of Emergency Management, a significant share of the arrests so far have been for misdemeanor-level trespassing in Kinney County, where local prosecutors are the most willing to handle the criminal cases. There, authorities have entered into agreements with ranchers, railroad companies and others to look for migrants who are crossing the border while illegally on private land….
Since the operation launched nearly two years ago, Texas has spent $4.4 billion on border security, up from just $800 million in its previous two-year budget cycle, which ended in August 2021.
That includes $1.8 billion approved by the Legislature to build a barrier along parts of the border and to deploy guardsmen and troopers to the region.
As of July, 1.6 miles of wall had been built, with 45 total miles planned at a cost of nearly $1 billion. State officials have mapped out 805 miles “where some kind of barrier may be necessary,” according to Abbott’s office.
A smaller chunk of the spending — some tens of millions of dollars — has gone toward supporting the court system and detention facilities that are processing and holding migrants. Abbott’s busing program, meanwhile, has cost more than $12.7 million, or about $1,700 per passenger.
But the largest expense, by far, has come from the deployment of troopers and guardsmen, forcing Republican leaders to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from a handful of other agency budgets, including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs the state prison system. Those transfers have been signed off on unilaterally by Abbott and a handful of other GOP leaders, who say they have since reimbursed the agencies, partly by backfilling employee salaries with federal COVID aid.
So, now the House Republicans wouldn’t lift a finger to even READ the border bill that the Senate carefully crafted, but they want to sneak off and try to pay Greg Abbott back for the money HE CHOSE to spend out of the Texas budget for his pet project (You can’t tell me he wasn’t doing this as an audition to get into the Trump administration if, by bad luck, it comes back again). that includes Roger Williams, our used-car state rep.
