Operation Lone Star Shows States Must Secure the Border Themselves

Why Is Texas Spending Billions on a Federal Responsibility?

Texas has spent more than $11 billion on Operation Lone Star since 2021 because the federal government refuses to enforce immigration law. State troopers and National Guardsmen have arrested thousands of illegal entrants and seized enough fentanyl to kill every Texan, yet Washington still pretends the border is secure. The state is doing the job the Constitution assigns to Congress and the president. Governor Greg Abbott did not ask for this fight. He inherited a border that had become a revolving door for human traffickers, drug cartels, and economic migrants from more than 150 countries. The federal government has the manpower, the budget, and the legal authority to close the border. It simply lacks the will. So Texas acted. The state deployed thousands of National Guardsmen, built miles of new barrier, and installed marine barriers in the Rio Grande to channel migrants toward lawful ports of entry. The Biden administration sued Texas over the buoy barrier. Federal lawyers demanded its removal. Texas kept it in the river. That single dispute captures the entire conflict. One level of government tries to seal the border. The other tries to stop it.

What Has Operation Lone Star Actually Accomplished?

Since its launch in March 2021, Operation Lone Star has led to more than 500,000 migrant apprehensions and referrals, according to figures released by the Texas Department of Public Safety. State authorities have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blames for tens of thousands of American deaths each year. Texas has also fortified miles of border barrier with concertina wire and steel fencing paid for by state taxpayers. These are not cosmetic measures. They are the direct result of a state government that decided its own citizens deserved protection. The Biden administration spent years claiming the border was under control while record numbers of migrants crossed. In fiscal year 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 2 million encounters along the southwest border, a number that does not include the unknown number of gotaways who slipped past agents entirely. Texas did not wait for permission. It deployed troopers, soldiers, and razor wire. National Guardsmen have repelled mass crossings in places like Eagle Pass. State troopers have arrested human smugglers on state highways. Local prosecutors have pressed trespassing charges that federal authorities refused to file. Every arrest is a message. Every seizure is a life saved. Every mile of barrier is a line drawn against lawlessness.

Does the Constitution Allow States to Act?

The Constitution gives Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, but it does not require states to sit idle while federal officials abandon their posts. Article IV, Section 4 promises that the United States shall protect every state against invasion. When that guarantee becomes a dead letter, governors have both the right and the obligation to defend their people. The Supreme Court has not endorsed every Texas tactic, but it has also not barred the state from arresting trespassers on state land or refusing to assist federal non-enforcement. States are not subsidiaries of the Department of Homeland Security. They are sovereign governments with police powers that predate the federal bureaucracy. The Framers understood that a republic rests on the consent of the governed, and that consent frays when citizens no longer believe their government will protect them from foreign threats. Texas has tested this doctrine in court repeatedly. Federal judges have sometimes sided with the administration. Other times they have allowed Texas to maintain its barriers and arrest policies while litigation continues. The legal battles will continue for years. The moral question is already settled. A government that refuses to defend its own borders has no business lecturing the people who step into the breach.

What Is the Human Cost of an Open Border?

The open border is not a victimless policy failure, and the damage falls hardest on working families who never asked to become collateral damage in a national experiment. In 2023, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that fentanyl remained the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. Much of that poison enters through ports of entry and remote crossings along the southwest border. Cartels use the chaos of mass migration to distract law enforcement and move their product. Meanwhile, American communities absorb the costs of shelter, schooling, medical care, and law enforcement for millions of people who entered illegally. Wages in construction, hospitality, and agriculture face downward pressure. Hospitals in border counties operate near capacity. Schools hire bilingual aides and struggle with overcrowded classrooms. Crime victims include American citizens and illegal migrants alike, because criminals exploit the same broken system. These are not abstract statistics. They are the lived experience of working families in Texas and beyond. Every small town that receives a busload of migrants without warning understands the cost. Every parent who loses a child to fentanyl understands it better.

What Should Washington Learn from Texas?

The lesson of Operation Lone Star is not complicated, because the American people have made their priorities clear at every election since the border crisis began. They want immigration laws enforced, cartels disrupted, and fentanyl kept out of their communities. The Texas model is expensive, but the cost of an open border is measured in lost lives, strained hospitals, overrun schools, and depressed wages. Other border states should follow suit. Arizona and New Mexico have their own tools. California has chosen the opposite path, and its residents are paying the price. The next administration in Washington can end this state-by-state patchwork by restoring the Remain in Mexico policy, completing physical barriers, and removing the magnets that draw illegal migration. It can end catch and release. It can reinstate the asylum cooperative agreements with Central American nations. It can finish the wall. Until then, Texas will keep writing the checks. And it will keep doing the job the federal government will not do.