Nearly $11 Billion has Been Spent on OLS Since its Inception
Contact: media@ilrc.org
(San Antonio, Texas)—In 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott unleashed Operation Lone Star (OLS), an unconstitutional and deadly law enforcement scheme that wastes vital state resources to target migrants for arrest, jail, and deportation. To date, nearly $11 billion has been spent on OLS.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) and AJA Advocacy Solutions has issued The Untenable Costs of Operation Lone Star, which looks at the financial harms OLS has waged across Texas and calls for it to be ended immediately. This resource also calls for funds wasted under OLS to be re-invested in funding vital resources that would benefit all Texans. Other OLS policy briefs the ILRC has published are:
- Criminalizing Immigration: The Influence of SB 4, Texas’s Regressive State Deportation Law
- Driver Prosecutions, Immigrants and “Smuggling” in Texas
“This policy brief examines how misguided OLS has been for Texas from a financial perspective,” said ILRC Senior Policy Attorney & Strategist Priscilla Olivarez. “As OLS spending spirals out of control, leaders of communities in Texas are speaking out about how those state-administered funds could drastically change the lives of everyday Texans who need strengthened public services and infrastructure.”
Here are excerpts from the policy brief:
- In 2022, the Texas Tribune reported that OLS cost taxpayers more than $2.5 million per week, making OLS the “most expensive of the state’s border operations, and the one with the broadest mandate and scope.”
- In January 2023, reporting from the Texas Observer noted that in state budget proposals, the Texas legislature would keep OLS spending at $4.8 billion for two years per its budget cycle.
- To keep OLS up and running, the state has previously diverted funds from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees child and adult welfare investigations, the state’s juvenile justice system, and Texas Health and Human Services, and other agencies. Reports about the Texas juvenile justice system describe how understaffing within the system has forced children in custody to relieve themselves in water bottles, food trays, and plastic bags–and nearly half of the incarcerated children were reportedly on suicide watch in 2022.
- In 2023, as the Texas legislature was considering its 2024-2025 state budget, the proposed $4.6 billion in funding for “border security” and OLS was put in sharp relief by a policy and research organizer: Instead of bolstering OLS, $3.9 million could be allocated for every school district in Texas, or $500,000 for each school, or $12,000 for every public school teacher, or more than $15 million for mental health services in every county, or $150,000 for each unhoused person in the state.
The ILRC makes these recommendations in the policy brief:
- Texas should invest the $11 billion and counting in taxpayer dollars spent on OLS into the Texas communities who need basic public services and infrastructure that work. Urgent community needs include improvements to water infrastructure, improvements in road paving and street lighting, improvements to the availability of public transit, updating and maintaining healthcare facilities and ensuring broad access to them, and the delivery of timely ambulance services, among others.
- Texas should respond to the needs of local communities regardless of whether these communities have declared border emergencies, or, if local law enforcement refuse to be part of OLS.
- Texas should reimburse state agencies from which funding was diverted to support OLS, such as the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and Texas Health and Human Services.
- Texas should pay reparations to victims of high-speed vehicle pursuits under OLS, and to victims of property damage caused by other OLS operations.
“Governor Abbott continues to ride the coattails of the gruesomely anti-immigrant Trump Administration, seizing the opportunity to militarize vast swaths of the U.S.-Mexico border with impunity–and using taxpayer dollars to do so, with no end to the runaway spending in sight,” Olivarez said. “Despite waning popularity and increased critiques from Texas legislators, there is no sign that Governor Greg Abbott intends to slow or halt OLS–even as Texans suffer from preventable harms and neglect under his administration.”
To learn more and get involved in ongoing advocacy efforts, please visit https://www.endlonestar.com/
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The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) is a national nonprofit that works with immigrants, community organizations, legal professionals, and policy makers to build a democratic society that values diversity and the rights of all people. Through community education programs, legal training & technical assistance, and policy development & advocacy, the ILRC works to protect and defend the fundamental rights of immigrant families and communities. Follow us at www.ilrc.org, and on Twitter and Instagram @the_ILRC