Texas’ Operation Lone Star counts low-level pot arrests as part of effort to secure border

AUSTIN — Jerald Perkins was leaving work in a West Texas oil discipline when he noticed the telltale blue lights within the rearview mirror. The state trooper pulled him over for lingering too lengthy within the quick lane. Perkins informed the officer about two blunts within the automobile and braced for the worst. But the trooper merely wrote Perkins a quotation and despatched him on his manner, in accordance to the officer’s report.

The site visitors cease some 150 miles from Mexico had no clear link to cross-border crime. Perkins is a U.S. citizen. And the quantity of medication concerned was tiny.

Yet the incident in February was credited to Operation Lone Star, the state’s multibillion-dollar push to secure the border with Mexico. It’s not an outlier.

Gov. Greg Abbott factors to the extra than 14,000 felony arrests as proof his border mission is cracking down on drug smugglers and human traffickers. But blended into the statistics are Texans caught with small quantities of marijuana throughout routine site visitors stops nowhere close to the border, in accordance to an evaluation by The Dallas Morning News.

Roughly one out of each 5 of the operation’s arrests has been a low-level marijuana cost that will set off solely a ticket, or much less, in some of the state’s largest cities. Fewer than 100 individuals have been busted with greater than 5 kilos of the drug, in accordance to arrest data The News obtained via an open data request from the Department of Public Safety.

The division didn’t say the way it determines which arrests are attributed to the operation that has flooded the border with state troopers and Texas National Guard members. Critics say Abbott is touting inflated numbers to look powerful on immigration in an election yr.

The state’s GOP leaders have pointed to a spike in unlawful immigration as justification to pump greater than $4 billion into the border safety mission.

Quality information is essential for leaders to make knowledgeable choices about how to use these taxpayer-funded sources, stated Victor Manjarrez, Jr., a former border patrol chief who now teaches at The University of Texas at El Paso. He questioned the inclusion of low-level marijuana costs that lack a nexus to the border.

“No one would ever say that it’s a cartel smuggling 2 ounces at a time,” Manjarrez stated.

Abbott, who has made border safety a centerpiece of his marketing campaign, is operating for a 3rd time period in November. Since he launched the immigration dragnet in March 2021, the mission has expanded in value and scope, but the central focus has remained combating drug and human smuggling on the U.S.-Mexico border.

But the Department of Public Safety stated it considers the operation to cowl a variety of 63 counties that stretch removed from the border into West Texas and up the Gulf Coast. Counties throughout Texas are additionally included when there’s “a seizure or arrest that has a border nexus,” division spokesperson Ericka Miller stated. The division didn’t clarify additional.

Arrests in counties which can be house to Midland, San Angelo and Corpus Christi – all greater than two hours drive from Mexico – account for tons of of border operation arrests. The commonest offense is low-level pot possession.

They embrace a 71-year-old Vietnam veteran pulled over in Pecos County for tinted home windows and ticketed after an officer discovered a “green leafy substance,” as nicely as a San Angelo cosmetologist stopped for dashing within the West Texas metropolis and arrested for a “marihuana cigarette in the ash tray,” in accordance to DPS reviews and public data.

Both have been cited for possessing lower than 2 ounces of marijuana. The division didn’t reply questions on how such circumstances aligned with Operation Lone Star.

“It seems like a trap,” stated Perkins, the oil discipline employee who lives in Houston and is attempting to rent a lawyer to deal with the case in court docket.

The Department of Public Safety has confronted scrutiny for its border metrics earlier than. In 2015, a legislative committee that conducts state company efficiency evaluations famous that DPS was not offering “sufficient information to the public and policymakers about the return on investment for border security funds.”

Rep. James White, a Hillister Republican who chairs a House homeland safety committee, stated arrests attributed to the operation ought to have a connection to the border. For instance, he would anticipate cartel members caught with small quantities of marijuana to be included within the rely.

“If they have no nexus to the mission, those metrics really shouldn’t be in the data pool,” White stated.

But arrest data offered by DPS make it arduous to inform. Immigration standing, potential gang affiliations and felony histories will not be recognized. The division didn’t reply to questions concerning the quantity of U.S. residents arrested below the operation.

“Our personnel have stopped gang members, human traffickers, sex offenders and many others from coming into our country illegally. Had we not been there, all of it likely would have crossed into the country unimpeded,” Miller, the DPS spokesperson, stated in a press release. “The state of Texas is sending a message to anyone who is thinking of crossing into our country illegally to think again.”

Statewide, the bulk of arrests attributed to Operation Lone Star have been for felony trespassing. But they’re primarily concentrated in rural Kinney County, which borders Mexico and the place officers have been aggressively implementing a controversial initiative to arrest and jail migrants caught on non-public property.

In 10 different border-area counties, together with Dimmit, Zavala and Uvalde, suspected human smuggling accounts for essentially the most arrests associated to the state’s border mission, in accordance to DPS information that runs via April.

In the Rio Grande Valley, a group of South Texas counties that make up the state’s busiest immigration hall, low-level marijuana possession is the most typical arrest below Operation Lone Star, data present. The identical is true in El Paso County and Webb County, the place the town of Laredo is situated.

Rep. Alex Dominguez, a Brownsville Democrat, criticized the operation as doing little.

“There are more troopers on the road here forcing people to drive a little bit slower,” he stated. “It is nothing but a political showpiece by the governor to try to show his strong-on-border security stance in hopes of him getting re-elected.”

In a press release, Abbott’s workplace defended the operation, saying it has resulted within the seizure of lethal medication like fentanyl and produced hundreds of felony arrests.

“Texas has and continues ramping up every available strategy and resource in response to President Biden’s ongoing border crisis to protect our state and our nation,” spokesman Renae Eze stated.