"Operation Lone Star"
INVESTIGATIVE CATEGORY
The Texas Tribune
02/24/2022
In March 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched a multibillion-dollar border crackdown that quickly became central to his reelection campaign. The governor repeatedly proclaimed the success of the initiative, dubbed Operation Lone Star, as he deployed thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard members to the border.
Operation Lone Star, he said, had made 11,000 criminal arrests and caught millions of lethal doses of drugs.
But this was not true, an investigation by The Texas Tribune, in collaboration with ProPublica, The Marshall Project and The Military Times, found.
We exposed that the state’s claim of success was based on shifting metrics that included crimes with no connection to the border and drug seizures and arrests from counties that received no additional funding or resources from the operation. We also showed, for the first time, how misdemeanor trespassing charges against migrants entering the country quickly became the largest share of the operation’s arrests despite the governor’s claims that it was capturing dangerous criminals.
We fact-checked claims made by state officials. And we showed how Abbott’s decadeslong push to amass power in a state with a weak governor system set him up to embark on Operation Lone Star.
We also established trusting relationships with National Guard members that allowed us to show the challenges of likely the largest long-term, state-controlled mission. The deeply sourced reporting identified a series of problems, including delayed payments to National Guard members, a shortage of critical equipment and poor living conditions.
The investigation into the governor’s claims of success had an impact even before publication.
After months of questioning from reporters, DPS acknowledged that it had incorporated arrests with no connection to the border and stopped counting more than 2,000 charges, including some for cockfighting, sexual assault and stalking. Of those, about 270 charges were for violent crimes, which are defined by the FBI as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
The Department of Justice also launched an investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses that had come to light through Operation Lone Star reporting.
And after the National Guard reporting, Abbott removed the Texas Military Department top general. Two more generals abruptly departed, and the commander in charge of Operation Lone Star was reassigned. TMD also took steps to speed up the purchase of lifesaving devices and began training troops to use them safely following the news organizations’ reporting about the soldier who drowned.
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Submitted by Sewell Chan.