Operation Lone Star arrests overwhelming border county

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – El Paso County is asking the State of Texas for millions of dollars to cover the cost of jailing individuals arrested through Operation Lone Star.

County Commissioners Court on Monday voted unanimously to submit a grant application to the Office of Gov. Greg Abbott for detainee processing, housing, judicial processing and medical costs. The vote authorized a separate application to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission to provide legal assistance to those detainees.

Commissioners also gave the green light to County Judge Ricardo Samaniego to send a letter requesting those detained by the Texas Department of Public Safety to be taken to a state jail, rather than the El Paso County Jail.

“In order to apply for that we need to submit an emergency declaration. But I really want the community to understand we have been hesitant because we wanted it to be limited – not to have more DPS agents here but to focus on the fact that it has been a huge impact on the community, on the county,” Samaniego said.

Since March 2021, Texas has surged DPS agents to border communities and deployed the Texas Army National Guard to the banks of the Rio Grande through Operation Lone Star. The mission seeks to discourage migrants from coming into Texas and to arrest migrant and drug smugglers.

In El Paso, that means housing several hundred more detainees than normal and losing federal government revenue for providing bed space to the U.S. Marshals Service. The federal government pays the county $101 a day for bed space at its jail and takes care of legal and medical costs of its detainees, the county judge said. Holding a detainee on state charges costs the county $85 to $87 a day without reimbursement.

“We’ve lost maybe $10 million in federal funding,” Samaniego said. “They used to be federal charges – smuggling and human trafficking — but now because of the governor’s declaration, they have become state charges. Anything that’s a state charge, including health and mental health, is not paid, it’s part of our budget.”

The grant request will be for $3 million in costs already incurred by the county this fiscal year and an additional $5 million, he said.

County Administrator Betsy Keller on told commissioners the County Jail at times has housed up to 400 Operation Lone Star detainees and has a “sustained rate” of 300 OLS detainees a day. Many of the smugglers are detained on El Paso streets, sometimes after chases. In March and April, hundreds of foreign nationals were brought into the El Paso County Jail after allegedly rioting at the Rio Grande, where the Texas Army National Guard has installed razor wire and remains vigilant.

She said the county sent a letter to the Governor’s Office last April explaining the situation and outlining possible solutions. Keller said the county received no reply.

But, if the state accepts OLS detainees, things could change, Samaniego said.

“Almost immediately 300 smuggling cases would go to a state facility, and we would increase beds from the federal government, and we would bring our revenue back up,” Samaniego said. “If things go as they are, we are almost losing $18 million by end of the year if we don’t get revenue from the federal government quickly.”

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