Tipsheet

Abbott: Texas Will Stop Busing Illegal Immigrants to Sanctuary Cities When...

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  January 16, 2024 11:45 AM

While Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) continue efforts to secure and enforce the U.S.-Mexico border — a duty abdicated by President Joe Biden and his administration — Operation Lone Star continues to prove successful. 

In addition to apprehending illegal immigrants and interdicting deadly drugs and illegal weapons streaming into Texas from Mexico with the help of dangerous cartels, Operation Lone Star has seen significant success in transporting illegal immigrants to "sanctuary cities" to shine a spotlight on the devastating impact of Biden's failed border policies. 

According to Abbott, Operation Lone Star has seen more than 495,000 illegal immigrants apprehended by state officials leading to more than 38,000 criminal arrests and resulting in nearly 35,000 felony charges — in addition to seizing enough fentanyl to kill more than 453 million people. 

As Abbott has pointed out, each of those individuals arrested or deadly doses seized would have — without Texas and Operation Lone Star — ended up on America's streets. 

On the sanctuary city relocation front, Operation Lone Star has now bused more than 100,000 illegal immigrants to places where Democrat leaders have declared their cities to be safe havens for illegal immigrants — forcing Democrats to confront the effects of such policies. 

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That number, according to the governor's office, includes busing more than:

  • 12,500 illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. since April 2022
  • 37,100 illegal immigrants to New York City since August 2022
  • 30,800 illegal immigrants to Chicago since August 2022
  • 3,400 illegal immigrants to Philadelphia since November 2022
  • 15,700 illegal immigrants to Denver since May 2023
  • 1,500 illegal immigrants to Los Angeles since June 2023

While Texas has taken on the duties that ought to be carried out by the federal government at the direction of the president and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — both of whom continue to deny that there's a "crisis" at the southern border — the Biden administration has continued to attack Texas with attempts to undermine Abbott and Operation Lone Star. 

The admin's efforts include multiple lawsuits against Texas from Biden's DOJ to block state efforts to secure the border and federal agents have even been ordered to dismantle or remove physical barriers set up by Texas to prevent the mass-crossings of illegal immigrants. 

Still, Abbott continues to do the right thing by seeking to keep illegal immigrants, deadly drugs, and dangerous criminals from exploiting Biden's open-border policies and endangering Americans. Rather than being cowed into ignoring the border like Biden, Abbott is pledging Texas will "continue transporting migrants" to sanctuary cities and "will not back down" until "Biden reverses course" on his disastrous policies.

Those efforts to secure the border include the construction of the first state-built border wall in U.S. history, another piece of Texas' all-of-the-above strategy to cut down on illegal immigrant entry and reduce the opportunity for more known "got-aways" to slip into the U.S. without being apprehended.