Texas state troopers receive orders to push exhausted migrants—including young children and nursing infants—into the Rio Grande to force them to return to Mexico.
Children cry and vomit after members of the Texas National Guard attack them with tear gas.
Families are denied water in scorching, 100-degree heat.
Migrants implore soldiers to stop firing rubber bullets at them because children are present.
Parents use a piece of cardboard to try to shield their one-year-old daughter from pepper balls fired by the National Guard.
Children are sliced open by concertina wire.
A young woman suffers a miscarriage while trapped in that same razor-sharp wire.
Texas forces choke, kick, beat, and curse at migrant children and adults to prevent them from entering the United States.
According to a recent report released by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), these are just some of the harrowing incidents of abuse and inhumane treatment that migrant children and their families are currently facing along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. Drawing on videos, news reports, accounts from eyewitnesses and service providers, and even a leaked email from a Texas DPS officer to his superiors, WOLA’s report details how military and law enforcement personnel tasked with carrying out Operation Lone Star are frequently using excessive force against unarmed children and other civilians, in violation of international law and U.S. law enforcement standards.
Children’s Defense Fund-Texas (CDF-TX ) is deeply concerned about the severe and life-threatening mistreatment of migrant children and their families by law enforcement agencies carrying out Operation Lone Star in our state, and about the fact that many of these migrants—who fear persecution, torture, or death in their home countries—are being denied the legal right under U.S. and international law to apply for asylum.
What is Operation Lone Star?
In March 2021, Governor Greg Abbott launched a border policing program called “Operation Lone Star” to deter irregular migration into Texas. Under Operation Lone Star, the governor has deployed members of the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety along the Texas-Mexico border. A floating barrier of buoys separated by metal discs with serrated edges has been placed in the middle of the Rio Grande, the Texas National Guard has installed more than 100 miles of concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, miles of border wall have been constructed using state funds, and Texas has spent more than $221 million of taxpayer money to transport 119,400 migrants to cities in other states, without any coordination of services at their destinations.
Operation Lone Star has failed to achieve its goals.
Three and a half years after its launch, Operation Lone Star has cost Texas taxpayers more than $11 billion and failed to deter migration into Texas. Although the number of migrants apprehended by Border Patrol in Texas has decreased since December 2023, data from Customs and Border Enforcement shows that Border Patrol apprehensions are declining in all states. Strikingly, Arizona has seen an even steeper decline in migration than Texas has—even though Arizona’s governor has not implemented anything comparable to Operation Lone Star.
When the Governor’s Office announced the roll-out of Operation Lone Star in March 2021, the stated purpose was “to combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas.” Yet data shows that U.S. citizens, not immigrants, smuggle the vast majority of the drugs fueling our nation’s opioid crisis. In 2022, 89% of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers were U.S. citizens, and in 2023, 93% of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal ports of entry or interior vehicle checkpoints, not along irregular migration routes. More than 46,000 migrants and asylum seekers have been arrested since Operation Lone Star was launched, but as of April this year, most of those arrested were charged with trespassing rather than any serious crime.
When introducing Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott also pointed to the need to confront federal border policies that he claimed were causing a humanitarian crisis and endangering the lives of Texans. Yet Operation Lone Star has only added to the humanitarian crisis at the border by making migrants’ journeys more dangerous and subjecting them to further abuse, without doing anything to address the root causes of poverty and violence that force migrants to flee their homes in the first place.
Operation Lone Star has also endangered the lives of Texans through unnecessary high-speed chases of vehicles thought to contain migrants. By the end of last year, such chases had increased in some Texas counties by over 1,000% since Operation Lone Star began, resulting in crashes that killed at least 74 people and injured at least 189. More broadly, Operation Lone Star and its characterization of immigrants as “invaders” are endangering Texans—particularly Texans of color—by fueling white supremacist rhetoric and promoting racial profiling.
Operation Lone Star has made the border more dangerous, especially for children.
Operation Lone Star is not merely an expensive and ineffective policy choice. Disturbingly, it is also a military operation on U.S. soil that has resulted in violence and human rights abuses against migrant children and their families, denying many people their legal right to apply for asylum in the process. According to WOLA:
[r]eports of abuse by Texas law enforcement and [the] National Guard under “Operation Lone Star” have included firing rubber bullets and pepper balls, beatings, and pushing people into concertina wire. Often, those targeted are on the Mexican side of the U.S. border, or barely on the U.S. side but separated from Texas forces by tall, layered coils of razor-sharp wire. Frequently, they are families with children and others seeking to turn themselves in to apply for protection in the United States.
Government statistics show that children and families make up a large proportion of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Militarizing the border through Operation Lone Star puts the lives of these children and their families at risk. As of December 2023, 41% of all migrants apprehended or expelled by U.S. Border Patrol were traveling as a family, and another 5% were unaccompanied minors. This means that children and their caregivers are frequently on the receiving end of Operation Lone Star’s harsh enforcement tactics. Moreover, arrests of migrants under Operation Lone Star have sometimes resulted in family separation, which studies have clearly shown has a long-term, negative impact on children’s psychological and physical well-being.
Migrant children and their families deserve safety, dignity, and compassion—not rubber bullets, razor wire, and violence.
As writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin once wrote, “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” CDF-Texas believes that we all share a moral responsibility to care for the children in our midst, regardless of where they were born or what immigration status they hold.
Families fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries should not face violence and persecution in the democratic country where they have come to seek refuge. Especially after enduring dangerous journeys and overcoming incredible obstacles in order to survive, migrant children arriving in Texas—like all children—deserve moral and humane policy responses that prioritize their well-being and foster their safe passage to adulthood. They deserve to be welcomed into community so they can grow up with dignity, hope, and joy.
Author
Trudy Taylor Smith
Senior Administrator of Policy and Advocacy