More than 50 members of the West Virginia National Guard landed at the southern border in Texas this week at Gov. Jim Justice’s behest to support the southern state’s controversial border security program, Operation Lone Star.
The mission will cost West Virginians roughly $600,000, a National Guard spokesman told WV News in June. Justice, in a briefing that same week, said West Virginia taxpayers are going to “have to bear the cost” of the deployment.
Spokespeople for the National Guard referred questions on the deployment to the Governor’s Office, which did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday on whether the state would be requesting a reimbursement from Texas for the expenses. Several Republican governors have not requested to be reimbursed, despite Texas setting aside $4 billion since 2020 for border security.
In a letter sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to governors in May requesting aid at the border, Abbott said Texas should not bear the financial burden of border security alone.
Justice, in public appearances this week, echoed that sentiment. “Illegal” border crossings, Justice alleged, are fueling the Mountain State’s drug epidemic due to the smuggling of illegal fentanyl.
“Every single day that more and more people cross that border, more and more potential bad things happen to West Virginia,” Justice said in a press briefing on Monday. “We’re a long ways away but we should step up and do our part.”
The Texas-Mexico border is nearly 2,000 miles away from central West Virginia.
According to the United States Sentencing Commission, more than 85% of people charged with fentanyl trafficking annually are U.S. citizens. Most — more than 90% — of the fentanyl that is seized at the Mexican border comes through legal points of entry, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
In February, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters it was “unequivocally false” that “non-citizens” were bringing fentanyl into the United States. Most immigrants at the border, he said, are asylum-seekers who are “making claims of credible fear” and looking for a safer place to live.
Justice, who is currently running a campaign for the U.S. Senate, is one of 14 Republican governors who have mobilized state troops to Texas in response to Abbott’s request.
The request from Abbott and the entirety of Operation Lone Star, however, have been met with harsh and vocal criticism from those living in Texas’ border counties and those who serve asylum-seekers and immigrants. Dozens of individuals have filed suit against Abbott and other state officials for constitutional rights violations carried out under Operation Lone Star.
Advocates have warned that increased military presence in border communities can be dangerous for both residents and service members, at least 10 of whom have died by suicide, medical emergencies and accidents since the operation expanded in 2021.
The Texas Tribune and ProPublica reported in July of 2022 that the federal Department of Justice was opening an investigation into civil rights violations and discrimination under Operation Lone Star.
Just last week, the DOJ notified Texas that it planned to file suit against Abbott for a floating border barrier — installed mostly by National Guard members from several states over the last few years — in the Rio Grande river.
‘A political stunt’
The rhetoric surrounding the situation at the border and Abbott’s request has been no more than a “political stunt,” said Sergio Trevino, an organizer with South Texas-based La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, a nonprofit advocacy organization for immigrants and others living along the Texas-Mexico border.
When Operation Lone Star launched in 2021, Trevino said LUPE immediately began work to educate leaders in the border counties about border security measures. None of the southernmost counties in Texas signed on to Abbott’s emergency declaration at the border.
“They didn’t sign on because we knew what Operation Lone Star was,” Trevino said. “It was a ploy to distract [Texas] citizens from what was going on with our electrical grid failing, from flooding in major cities… It was a way for Abbott to get attention for ‘protecting our border,’ which is a political point often used to divide us and distract us.”
Trevino spends a lot of time walking the border, where he interacts regularly with National Guard members and other enforcers sent there from other, far away states.
Details were not available on what work the West Virginia Guard members — who all volunteered for the mission — would be doing once they arrived.
Reporting from other states where troops were sent on similar missions over the last few years detailed that there was often not much for them to do. They would be assigned busy work, including shoveling horse manure, surveying cameras and filing paperwork.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, state personnel — including National Guard troops — are not authorized to process people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, as that is a federal responsibility.
Trevino said he understands that troops sent to the border through Operation Lone Star are not responsible for the political theater being put on by their leaders.
“Most of these people think they are protecting us from this evil or this danger when the reality is that along the border are some of the safest cities and communities,” Trevino said. “We know that people’s hearts are in the right place — they care about this country, our nation, our wellbeing — but they are being lied to and being manipulated by people who see this as a political opportunity.”
’It’s an attack on people like us’
At a deployment ceremony held Monday, Justice commended the 54 National Guard members who will spend the next month in South Texas for their efforts to confront “the total chaos” at the southern border.
“We see countless situations where bad guys and bad girls are coming, bad people that are doing bad stuff, whether that be drugs or trafficking or whatever it may be,” Justice told the members of the Guard.
For immigrants in West Virginia like Jackie Lozano, the immigrants’ rights campaign coordinator at the West Virginia arm of the American Civil Liberties Union, hearing Justice call people who cross the border in search of asylum “bad people” is disheartening.
Lozano learned when she was in high school that she was undocumented. She has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, having come here as a child from Mexico with her family. She is now authorized to work in the country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“I work with immigrants every day, including those who are undocumented like myself,” Lozano said. “Hearing this kind of rhetoric from [Justice] it obviously makes us feel unseen and unheard. It’s an attack on people like us and it makes us feel like we’re being used. It makes us feel unwelcome here.”
Immigrants account for less than 2% of West Virginia’s population, according to a West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy analysis of Census data. Despite having one of the lowest rates of undocumented immigrants in the nation, those who do live in West Virginia are 7.7 times more likely to be arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement than in the United States as a whole, the Center reported in 2019.
Immigration has helped the state reduce its consistent population decline, and companies in West Virginia often recruit highly educated immigrants for specialized work in the state, according to the Center on Budget and Policy.
“West Virginia is losing population. The state has been trying to attract tourism, but doing this — xenophobia — will only keep people away. We’re sending the message, ‘don’t come here, we don’t want you’,” Lozano said. “That’s what’s happening here: xenophobia. We should be welcoming immigrants with open arms, inviting them to make a home here, and this is not that.”
Lozano is also concerned about having West Virginia National Guard troops participate in the questionable and potentially illegal activities being carried out under Operation Lone Star. Last month, news outlets reported that the state is investigating claims that enforcement officers were told in emails to push children and nursing mothers into the Rio Grande and deny them drinking water.
“Operation Lone Star is a violation of the most basic human rights and for us to participate in this tragedy is unconscionable,” Lozano said. “Who would want to be held accountable for causing violations for human rights? We’re helping put these systems in place that are getting people hurt.”
The national trend of Republican governors who serve states far away from the border getting involved in its politics is an example of “shifting the blame,” Lozano said.
“It’s shifting the blame for issues we’re facing here in West Virginia onto others,” Lozano said. “Leaders don’t want to take accountability for the lack of response to issues here.”
Instead of blaming border-crossers — and shoveling $600,000 of taxpayer money to enforcement at a border thousands of miles away — Lozano urged state leaders to examine how they could improve a number or systems that would better life for everyone in West Virginia, including investment in public education, mental health resources, addiction prevention and treatment and more.
And in Texas, Trevino wants the same for his state. The more-than $5 billion in taxpayer funds that has been used there so far for Operation Lone Star could go to infrastructure investments, education initiatives and more. Residents need it, Trevino said, and the “misuse” of these taxpayer dollars for “political points” is disappointing at best.
“All of this rhetoric about what’s happening at the border, it’s just fears that are being conjured up for politicians to gain more power and use up more resources,” Trevino said. “The reality is the U.S.-Mexico border doesn’t divide us, it connects us through commerce, community, culture. It’s that connection that makes us stronger and it shouldn’t be used to divide us.”
This story was originally published on West Virginia Watch
West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and Twitter.
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