Everything Is Bigger in Texas—Even the Loopholes
Texas has decided that if the federal government won’t let it declare its own foreign policy, it will improvise. Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star has now quietly metastasized from “border security theater” into “statewide deportation cosplay.” DPS strike teams, created at Abbott’s direction, have made more than 3,100 arrests this year—nearly nine out of ten for suspected immigration violations. Not just on the border, but in Dallas, Austin, Houston. The suburbs. The strip malls. Probably the Buc-ee’s bathrooms, too.
There’s just one small detail: Texas DPS doesn’t have a 287(g) agreement that legally deputizes its officers to enforce federal immigration law. As of late July, they were winging it—arresting people on suspicion of federal violations with all the legal grounding of a high school mock trial team. Imagine arresting someone for “looking federal.”
And yet, the gears keep turning. ICE happily partners. Judges groan. Families disappear. All while Border Patrol itself reported a record low of 4,600 illegal crossings in July 2025. Record low. Like, historically quiet. Abbott is building an army to fight a problem that currently looks like a coffee break.
DPS Strike Teams: Now With Extra Constitution Violations
The brilliance of this plan—if you define brilliance as “stupidity wrapped in official letterhead”—is that Texas is running a deportation assist program without the legal scaffolding. They’re deputizing officers not by law, but by vibes.
It’s the same logic that makes Texans put “No Trespassing” signs on literally everything: they assume that writing the rule is enough to make it true. Except here, the rule doesn’t exist. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals already told them so on July 4, blocking SB 4 as unconstitutional because immigration enforcement is federal turf. Like fireworks, but with more paperwork.
Did that stop them? No. The Texas legislature then passed SB 8 on June 1, requiring most sheriffs to sign 287(g) agreements by January 1, 2026. Abbott signed it on July 15 like a man trying to turn Monopoly money into real cash. The message was clear: “If the courts don’t like what we’re doing, we’ll just keep passing new laws until something sticks.”
A Machine of Their Own
What Texas is building is not just a policy—it’s a machine. A deportation machine that runs on local cops, ICE, and a web of paperwork thick enough to suffocate due process.
Critics warn about racial profiling. They warn about immigrant communities avoiding police entirely because every traffic stop might lead to deportation. They warn about the collapse of trust, the inevitable lawsuits, the lawsuits after those lawsuits.
Abbott calls it leadership. His supporters call it sovereignty. Everyone else calls it what it is: a state government cosplaying as a nation-state, treating 2.1 million unauthorized residents not as neighbors, workers, parents, or kids—but as quotas.
Record Low Crossings, Record High Theater
Here’s the part that should make your head explode: crossings are at modern record lows. Border Patrol counted just 4,600 in July. Meanwhile, ICE managed to arrest 822 people in a single week in August, almost a fifth of the Border Patrol’s entire monthly number. Texas is not responding to a surge—it’s manufacturing urgency out of thin air.
Abbott’s argument is basically: “The house is finally quiet, so we bought a thousand more smoke alarms.” He is fighting a ghost, but the ghost bleeds.
Why This Works Politically
The cruelty is the point, sure. But the math is political. Abbott doesn’t need to fix immigration. He needs to show that he’s “tough” on it. Arrests equal headlines. Headline numbers equal campaign ads. By the time the courts untangle what’s unconstitutional, he’s already won the next primary.
And because Texas has 2.1 million unauthorized residents, there’s no shortage of bodies to make the machine look busy. Every arrest gets spun as proof the machine is working, even if the machine is built on shaky legal bolts.
The Risk Everyone Pretends Not to See
Every machine eventually gets turned on the wrong person. It’s inevitable. Profiling doesn’t stay clean. Sweeps don’t stay targeted. Some U.S. citizens will get caught up. Some green card holders. Some long-time residents with kids in Texas schools. They’ll be handcuffed, processed, maybe even deported.
And when that happens, the state will shrug and say, “Mistakes were made.” Mistakes with consequences you can’t walk back.
But the mistake isn’t a bug. It’s the system working as designed. Confuse, intimidate, discourage. If people are too scared to live normally, that counts as success.
The Fifth Circuit’s Warning Shot
The July 4 ruling blocking SB 4 should have been the end of the story. The court said plainly: states can’t make their own immigration laws. But in Texas, court rulings are just plot twists. SB 8 doubled down, mandating sheriffs sign federal cooperation agreements by 2026.
This is how erosion works. One law gets blocked. Another takes its place. Layer by layer, the protections fade. By the time the Supreme Court untangles it, the machine is already operational, people are already deported, and the precedent is set by default.
The Human Stakes
Behind the numbers—3,131 arrests, 822 in a single ICE sweep, 2.1 million people at risk—are families. Kids who wake up to find their parents gone. Workers who vanish from job sites. Communities stripped of trust in the very police they’re supposed to call for help.
Every statistic is a story of fear. But statistics make it easier to ignore that fear. Politicians prefer charts to faces.
The American Irony
Texas loves to brag about freedom. But freedom here means sheriffs playing ICE agent, DPS turning traffic stops into deportation funnels, and immigrants treated like criminals for existing.
The irony is glaring: the party of “small government” is building the largest, most invasive interior immigration police state in the country. Limited government, except when it comes to your papers. States’ rights, except when the Constitution says otherwise.
It’s not freedom. It’s control, dressed up as protection.
Why Everyone Else Should Care
You might think this is a Texas story. But when one state builds a machine, others copy it. Arizona, Florida, Georgia—they’re watching. They’ll take notes. What starts as Lone Star policy becomes a template.
The risk isn’t just to immigrants. It’s to anyone who thinks the Constitution still means what it says about federal authority, due process, and equal protection.
Because if Texas can rewrite immigration enforcement on a whim, what else can states rewrite?
Summary: Deportation by Design
Texas has transformed Operation Lone Star into a statewide deportation machine, with DPS strike teams making over 3,100 arrests since January 2025—most for federal immigration violations they aren’t technically authorized to enforce. All this while crossings hit modern record lows, showing that the urgency is more political theater than necessity. Courts have already blocked one Texas immigration law as unconstitutional, but lawmakers doubled down with another, mandating sheriff cooperation by 2026. The result is a vast apparatus that risks racial profiling, wrongful arrests, and systemic due process violations, all in service of Abbott’s political branding. Texas isn’t solving a crisis—it’s building one, and the human cost is already written into the gears.