Uncharted territory: Trump’s Anti-immigration Plans Could Take Center Stage in Texas

By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune

  Texas is positioned better than any state to help Trump carry out his ambitious anti-immigration agenda. But it is also vulnerable to those policies’ impacts. For more than a year, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged a vast immigration crackdown that includes ending birthright citizenship, reviving border policies from his first time in office and deporting millions of people through raids and detainment camps.

 Perhaps no state is in a better position to help him than Texas. And no state might feel the impacts of such initiatives as much as Texas. About 11% of immigrants in the United States, 5 million, live in Texas. The state is home to an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons — the second-most in the country after California. It is also led by Republican elected officials who are politically in lock-step with Trump.

 When Trump left office in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott surged resources to the state’s 1,254-mile border with Mexico through a border security mission, Operation Lone Star, that has so far cost $11 billion in state money. It includes the deployment of thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard troops to patrol the border. He started building a state-funded border wall after Biden ended Trump’s wall project. He sent busloads of newly-arrived migrants from border towns to northern cities led by Democrats.

  Texas deployed police and military for immigration enforcement on its own accord. While the Biden administration tried checking Texas’ authority — most notably suing to stop a new law that would let state police arrest suspected undocumented persons for illegal entry into the country — Trump has signaled he is eager to work with the state.

  “When I’m president, instead of trying to send Texas a restraining order, I will send them reinforcements,” Trump told a crowd in Las Vegas in January. “Instead of fighting border states, I will use every resource tool and authority of the U.S. president to defend the United States of America from this horrible invasion that is taking place right now.” Immigration lawyers say for Trump to accomplish his deportation promises, he could also rely on existing law enforcement agreements between federal and local authorities while expanding the use of “expedited removal,” a fast-track removal process that does not involve a person having to go before an immigration court.

  Trump’s promised policies have the potential to upend the lives of millions in the state — as well as some big industries that rely on immigrant and migrant labor. Immigrants account for roughly 18% of Texas’ population, but make up 40% of all employees in construction and a significant portion of workers in the oil and gas and mining industries, according to research papers published in September by the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for immigrants.