Abbott gave Trump credit when Texas closed a border site for booking migrants. But arrests were already low.

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Last month, Gov. Greg Abbott credited President Trump when he announced that Texas planned to close one of two booking facilities it opened as part of its all-out border clampdown, Operation Lone Star, that saw state troopers arresting migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border on state charges of criminal trespassing.

“Thanks to President Trump, illegal border crossings are at all-time record lows and, unlike under President Joe Biden, the Trump Administration is quickly deporting illegal immigrants from our country,” Abbott said in a news release. “As a result, there is no longer a need for Texas to maintain the jail booking facility in Jim Hogg County.”

But the reality isn’t so simple.

Average monthly bookings at the Jim Hogg County facility, located between Laredo and McAllen, has dropped by more than half since 2022, from an average of 67 people each month to 26 last year, according to intake statistics obtained by The Texas Tribune through a public records request. Last April, the facility recorded processing just nine inmates, according to the records from the governor’s office.

A second site in Val Verde County, which typically processed hundreds of more inmates than Jim Hogg, has also recorded a decrease in its average monthly bookings from 362 in 2022 — the first full year it was open — to 276 last year. It remains open.

Trump returned to the White House in January.

Asked to comment on the monthslong trend of lower bookings at the Jim Hogg facility before it was closed, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris said, “The suggestion that President Biden’s open border policies had anything to do with reduced border crossings is laughable. Illegal crossings dropped because of the years-long aggressive and consistent efforts of President Trump, Governor Abbott, and other leaders to bring the border crisis to the forefront of the national conversation.”

Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 — nearly two months after President Biden’s inauguration — explaining that Texas had to police the Texas-Mexico border because the Biden administration had failed to control the border.

The mission sent thousands of Texas National Guard troops to the 1,250-mile border as well as Department of Public Safety troopers, who were tasked with arresting migrants with trespassing on private property and cracking down on human smugglers.

To date the operation has cost $11 billion, which Abbott has asked the federal government to reimburse. But the governor has also asked the Legislature to earmark another $6.5 billion for border security for the next two years as lawmakers hash out the state’s spending plan during the current legislative session.

The budget request, which has sailed through both chamber’s initial budget negotiations, comes after Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick floated the idea of reducing border security spending following Trump’s victory in November — and as the number of people arrested for crossing the border illegally sinks to lows not seen in years.

In January, Border Patrol arrested 21,593 people for illegally crossing the border from Mexico. That was the fewest number of arrests since at least May 2020, two months after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted widespread shutdowns throughout the U.S.

While Trump and political allies like Abbott take credit for the downturn in border crossings, immigration policy experts note that the numbers have been falling since December 2023, after the Biden administration struck a deal with Mexico to crack down on migration at its southern border with Guatemala. Biden later issued an executive last June that widely restricted asylum, which led to a further decrease in migrant apprehensions.

Trump also threatened Mexico with tariffs on his first day in office unless it clamped down further, which experts also believe played a role in the latest decrease.

“The governor can do everything he wants to do but it’s not done in a vacuum,” said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization based at Rice University in Houston. “Despite the fact that Texas has thrown $11 billion at the issue of border security, it’s really a matter of acting in concert.”

Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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