Texas this week showed off border land it has offered for the incoming Trump administration’s proposed mass deportation operation.
Standing near the Rio Grande with heavy machinery used for building a Texas-funded border wall, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham showed off the land she promised for a deportation camp.
“I have extended an offer to President Trump and incoming border czar Tom Homan to use this 1,400-acre property to construct a facility for the processing, detention, and coordination efforts of what will be the largest deportation of violent criminals in our nation's history.”
Buckingham said a facility built on this farmland recently bought by Texas will be the final stop for processing migrants before deportation.
She also promised more Texas land for mass deportation: “The new project that the General Land Office is going to bargain that I have created is the Jocelyn Initiative, in which we will locate appropriate land under my jurisdiction to lease for the construction of violent criminal deportation facilities.”
The Jocelyn Initiative is named after 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray of Houston who police said was killed by two Venezuelan men who were in the country illegally.
However, studies show migrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than U.S. citizens.
Buckingham's announcement came the same day that Gov. Greg Abbott and Homan traveled to Edinburg and Eagle Pass to serve Thanksgiving meals to troops on Tuesday.
They went to the border towns to visit National Guardsmen and Department of Public Safety troopers who are serving on Abbott's controversial border mission Operation Lone Star.
Homan said mass deportation will be happening, and he praised Abbott on his work to secure the border.
"That is why there needs to be a mass deportation," he said. "We got a mass number of people, millions of people who will get a final order and be ordered removed. If we don't do it, what is the option? Let them stay. Because you let them stay, you'll never fix the border."
Homan has said the federal government would take Texas up on its offer, but few details have been released by Trump's transition team or Abbott's office.
When addressing the crowd of troops, Abbott acknowledged the difficulty of the state border mission and expressed gratitude to them for their service.
“I know that sometimes what you're doing may be hard," he said. "My only hope is this, and that is that you know also, every single day how important, how essential it is what you're doing. Texans are counting on you.”
Abbott launched Operation Lone Star three years ago, claiming Texas stepped in where the Biden administration was failing to secure the border. The Biden administration has challenged the legality of the initiative in court, arguing that border security is under the purview of the federal government.
With an incoming Trump administration pledging hardline immigration policies, Abbott recently said that he would possibly put that funding back toward Texas schools and property tax cuts.
