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Migrant families wait for their bus at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas before traveling to meet relatives or sponsors on March 2, 2021. (Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday launched a program that would deploy state national guard troops and other agencies to respond to the burgeoning crisis at the southern border.

Abbott announced that his office has launched Operation Lone Star, which will deploy air, ground, and marine, and tactical border security assets to prevent Mexican criminal organizations from smuggling drugs and people into Texas. The operation will be launched in collaboration with the state’s Department of Public Safety.

“Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in a statement to media outlets on Saturday.

“We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”

This comes as the number of illegal crossings at the southern border continue their steadily rise since October last year. The number of encounters at the southwest border between October 2020 and January 2021 was 296,259, which is up from 164,932 during the same period in 2019 and 2020, according to data from the U.S. Custom and Border Patrol (CBP), representing a 79.6 percent increase.

Meanwhile, Reuters has reported, citing anonymous sources, that the number of illegal immigrants apprehended by U.S. border agents spiked even further for the month of February at nearly 100,000 migrants detained. CBP has yet to release its February data.

Since taking office Biden has reversed several Trump-era border security measures that were aimed at stemming the flow of illegal immigration at the southern border and increasing America’s public security.

The increased number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border in recent weeks has seen the Biden administration open more overflow shelters to handle the influx. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas added on Monday that instead of “expelling young children” to Mexico while processing their asylum claims, as was done under the Trump administration, DHS is working to release minors to relatives or sponsors in the United States if the minors are from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.

Some of the immigration policies that Biden implemented include temporarily ending former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols that sent illegal immigrations back into Mexico while their cases are decided. He has also reversed Trump’s ban on travel from terror-prone countries, halted the remaining construction of the border wall, and has issued a sweeping immigration package to Congress that offers a legalization pathway to an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

These actions have drawn widespread criticism, in particular, from Trump.

“Our border is now totally out of control thanks to the disastrous leadership of Joe Biden,” Trump wrote in a statement released on March 5 through an intermediary.

“Our great Border Patrol and ICE agents have been disrespected, demeaned, and mocked by the Biden Administration,” Trump added, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“A mass incursion into the country by people who should not be here is happening on an hourly basis, getting worse by the minute. Many have criminal records, and many others have and are spreading covid,” he wrote, referring to COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Earlier this month, a large group of migrants seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border held a demonstration in Mexico, calling for Biden to let them into the United States.

Biden has not yet acknowledged the crisis or announced any concrete plan to address the growing numbers of illegal crossings. When asked by a reporter this week whether there is a crisis at the border, Biden replied, “No, we’ll be able to handle it.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sent a letter to Biden on Friday requesting a meeting to address the issue, saying that he has “great concern” about how his administration is handling the border crisis.

“We must acknowledge the border crisis, develop a plan, and, in no uncertain terms, strongly discourage individuals from Mexico and Central America from ever making the dangerous journey to our southern border,” McCarthy wrote (pdf).

Source: Texas Launches Operation to Combat Drug, People Smuggling at Southern Border

Former acting ICE Director Tom Homan speaks at an event for Angel families and sheriffs outside the Capitol building in Washington on Sept. 25, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

The former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says the new administration’s steps to narrow the criteria for immigration enforcement are “just ridiculous.”

“It’s almost like it’s not illegal to be illegally in the United States anymore,” Tom Homan told The Epoch Times on Feb. 18.

Homan retired during the Trump administration, after directing the agency responsible for interior immigration enforcement and deportations as well as investigations into human trafficking and cross-border crime.

He’s concerned the Biden administration is rendering immigration law meaningless.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Feb. 18 announced new enforcement priorities that will focus on three groups of illegal immigrants: national security threats such as known or suspected terrorists; those who crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1, 2020; and public safety threats who are convicted of aggravated felonies.

Any ICE agent who encounters an illegal immigrant who falls outside of the three categories must get pre-approval from their field office before taking any action.

“They say it’s public safety, but it’s only the worst of the worst,” Homan said. “When it comes to assault, when it comes to robbery and burglary, and all these other crimes that they’ve taken off the table, they’ve pretty much sent a message to the rest of the world [that] it’s OK to enter the country illegally—as long as you don’t commit a few of the most serious crimes, you’re free to stay, because ICE isn’t looking for you.”

He argues that crimes such as driving under the influence should be considered a public safety issue.

“I was a police officer. I know what it’s like to run upon a scene of a deadly DUI—it’s terrible. And they’ve obviously never talked to an angel mom or angel dad whose child was killed by someone here illegally that was driving drunk,” Homan said.

A DHS official said the new guidelines for ICE are to help the agency focus its limited resources on “cases that the public cares about.”

The official said ICE arrests aren’t expected to drop under the new guidelines. “It’s just a question to us of reallocating resources to the cases that really, truly matter,” the official said.

But Homan said ICE was already prioritizing public safety threats.

Ninety-two percent of the almost 186,000 individuals that ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations removed in fiscal 2020 had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to ICE’s end-of-year report.

ICE also conducted more than 103,000 interior arrests—just under 30 percent fewer than in fiscal 2019, due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Approximately 90 percent of those arrested had a criminal conviction or charge, according to the report. Those arrested included aliens with criminal charges or convictions for 1,837 homicide offenses, 37,247 assault offenses, and 10,302 sexual assault or sex offenses.

“Every crime committed by an illegal alien is a preventable crime,” Homan said. “If we had true border security, true immigration enforcement—if we actually enforced immigration laws in this country and secured our border—thousands of crimes every day could be prevented because they’re not here.”

Part of ICE’s job is to track down and remove the 672,000 fugitives who have been ordered removed by a federal immigration judge but are still in the United States.

But the new DHS directive says ICE agents must first get clearance from supervisors if they encounter illegal immigrants who aren’t convicted criminals during operations.

The decision to then arrest the individual, or not, needs to take into account whether the person might be suffering from a serious physical or mental illness, a DHS official said.

“We want them [ICE] to think about ties to the community, whether the individual has family here in the United States, U.S. citizen family members, and other considerations,” the official said.

Homan said DHS is telling ICE agents to ignore removal orders from immigration judges.

“At what point can the executive branch tell the judicial branch that their legal orders are meaningless?” he said.

“It’s ridiculous for a law enforcement officer to have to call a supervisor for permission to enforce the law. The law is black and white. Name a state trooper that needs to get approval to write a speeding ticket.”

On Feb. 22, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was asked whether he believed illegal entry into the United States should remain a crime. The immigration court system sits within the Department of Justice.

“I just haven’t thought about that question,” Garland said. “I think the president has made clear that we are a country with borders and with a concern about national security. I don’t know if a proposal to decriminalize but still make it unlawful to re-enter. I just don’t know the answer to that question. I haven’t thought about it.”

President Joe Biden has undone several border security measures that the Trump administration had put into effect, including temporarily suspending deportations of illegal aliens, reversing President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from terror-prone countries, halting border wall construction, and issuing a sweeping immigration package to Congress that includes amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

Homan asserts that the Biden approach is “never going to solve the immigration crisis, and so the border will continue to be out of control.”

He expects an imminent humanitarian crisis at the border.

“During the last surge [in 2019], Border Patrol said 50 to 60 percent of their manpower is no longer on the border because they’re changing diapers, making hospital runs, taking care of families, [with] half or more [agents] no longer on the line,” he said.

“President Biden was vice president during the first surge in FY14 and ’15. How did we stop it? We stopped it by building detention facilities and detaining people until they saw a judge. So he forgot all the lessons learned and now he’s trying to stop detention.”

ICE detention facility capacity has been decreased from 52,000 to 15,000 illegal aliens.

Source: Exclusive: Former ICE Chief Says Immigration Law Becoming Meaningless