AUSTIN, Texas — Claims by Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) that Texas's border security initiative has led to a decrease in illegal immigrants is backed up by the federal government's statistics, according to a Washington Examiner analysis.
Immigrants traversing Mexico to get into the United States are increasingly bypassing the Texas border to cross into Arizona and California in the wake of Abbott’s stepped-up enforcement.
The numbers show how the percentage of arrests in Texas versus other border states has shifted. In 2021, 69% of illegal immigrant arrests across the southern border occurred in Texas.
As Abbott stepped up security at the start of the Biden administration in 2021, arrests of illegal crossers began to fall and dropped to just 34% last month.
"In Texas, we've been able to achieve a decrease in illegal crossings only because of great teamwork," Abbott said during a press conference in Eagle Pass on Thursday afternoon. "Part of that teamwork is our partnership with the Texas National Guard, and we are currently working with the Texas Military Department to add more razor wire, anti-climb barrier, and personnel."
Texas has increased its police and military presence at the border, even passing laws aimed at cracking down on human and drug smuggling.
The U.S. Border Patrol, a federal entity, divides the roughly 1,950-mile southern border into nine regions. Five are based out of Texas, which makes up 1,240 miles, or 62%, of the entire border.
The four other regions are based out of Arizona and California, which make up 510 miles of the entire border combined. New Mexico’s 180 miles fall under the El Paso, Texas, region.
In fiscal 2021, which ran from October 2020 through September 2021, 69% of illegal immigrant arrests took place in Texas. The other 31% were in California and Arizona, according to publicly available U.S. Customs and Border Protection data .
The border crisis began in February 2021, just weeks after President Joe Biden took office and rescinded a plethora of Trump-era immigration policies that had infuriated Democrats.
On March 6, 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a statewide initiative that would send more than 10,000 Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers to regions of the border to help federal law enforcement catch smugglers moving immigrants across the river.
Abbott has stepped up the operation since 2022, which was when the number of arrests in his state began to decline.
In 2022, Texas made 63% of Border Patrol arrests versus 37% in the other states.
In May 2023, Texas DPS in riot gear refused to allow immigrants who had waded across the Rio Grande to pass through a barricaded area on the riverbank of Brownsville.
In June 2023, Abbott announced a 1,000-foot buoy wall in the Rio Grande between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, a part of the border that has been the epicenter for the crisis over the past three years.
The Department of Justice sued Abbott in July 2023 on the basis that the state had not obtained permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a requirement of the federal Rivers and Harbors Act. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed Abbott to keep the floating buoys in the water through May, when a new hearing is scheduled.
Eric Ruark, research director at a Washington-based organization that advocates lower immigration levels, said the state's actions have had some impact on immigrants trying to cross.
"It probably has cut down [crossings] somewhat when people are having trouble getting over that," Ruark of NumbersUSA said. "Word spreads quickly."
By 2023, Texas arrests hit 59%, while Arizona and California arrests rose to 41%.
Then, in October 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over federal Border Patrol agents’ presence and actions at the border.
Paxton claimed that the agents were “facilitat[ing] the surge of migrants” into Eagle Pass by cutting through circular fences of razor wire that the state had installed in select parts of the border since 2021.
All the while, arrests continued to shift further west. In the first three months of fiscal 2024, October, November, and December 2023, 49% of the arrests at the southern border occurred in Texas and 51% were in Arizona and California.
Last year, the state legislature passed two bills, each known as S.B. 4. The first was passed during the body's third special legislative session and took effect this week. It increased the punishment for smuggling immigrants or operating a stash house from a two-year minimum to 10 years.
The second S.B. 4 was signed into law in December 2023 and allows state police to arrest people on immigration charges, an authority that until now was only available to federal police because immigration violations are dictated by federal law, not state law.
This second S.B. 4 was slated to take effect in March, but the Biden Justice Department sued in early January, delaying its start.
Simon Hankinson, an immigration analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation nonprofit organization in Washington, said the looming implementation of Texas's laws "certainly" could be driving smugglers to move immigrants across into other states for fear immigrants who have paid thousands to get into the U.S. or the smugglers themselves would be jailed by Texas if caught.
"Smugglers and immigrants, illegal immigrants, are well aware of the domestic politics. And if they think there's a decent chance that they're going to be arrested or hassled crossing into Texas, then sure, why not go to Arizona or California, where you've got governors who are less enforcement-minded and then you can get in," Hankinson said.
Ruark, however, noted the delayed implementation of the S.B. 4 law that is caught up in legal battles with the Justice Department.
"Gov. Abbott has been very vocal, but that doesn't translate particularly when you're tied up in court as to what Texas can do and what Abbott is going to be willing to do," Ruark said. "But I do think that probably smugglers are responding to what Texas is doing."
Adam Isacson, an immigration analyst for human rights group Washington Office on Latin America who travels frequently around the hemisphere tracking migration trends, said he thinks Texas's harsher laws will have a greater impact on illegal immigration than even the barbed wire and soldiers.
"Just the news of [the laws] may have had more impact than just buoy walls and things like that," said Isacson, defense oversight director for WOLA. "[Smugglers and immigrants are] waiting to see how that shakes out because nobody wants to end up in jail or in some sort of concentration camp."
On Jan. 10, frustrated with Border Patrol agents cutting the wire to apprehend immigrants who would later likely be released into the country, Texas authorities fenced in a 2.5-mile area of Eagle Pass’s riverfront and locked out all federal police, including Border Patrol.
CBP data obtained by the Washington Examiner for the month of January, weeks ahead of its public release later this month, revealed that illegal crossings have continued to shift west at an extraordinarily fast rate in January as Abbott further clamped down.
Roughly 34% of all January arrests occurred in Texas compared to nearly 65% that took place in Arizona and California. Of 125,000 arrests nationwide, 50,000 immigrants were apprehended in Tucson, Arizona, and 25,000 in San Diego.
In the Del Rio region of Texas, where Eagle Pass is located, illegal immigrant arrests went from 71,000 in December to 17,000 in January.
Abbott's crackdown is not without controversy.
Democrats, including Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Greg Casar (D-TX), have called for the Biden administration to rein in Abbott and accused him of overstepping his legal authority on a matter that can only be taken up by federal authorities.
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke accused Abbott of using the state military to “defy a Supreme Court ruling,” a reference to the decision in January that allowed federal Border Patrol agents to cut through state-installed razor wire at the border. However, federal agents have been locked out of the border in Eagle Pass for four weeks, leaving them unable to cut away wire or apprehend immigrants.
But Abbott plans to see how low that number will go. Abbott announced while in Eagle Pass Thursday that the state will commandeer other parts of the border and boot federal Border Patrol agents, which could lead to even lower illegal immigration numbers into Texas.
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"Working together, we will expand current operations in other parts of the border to decrease illegal immigration and ensure that we add more soldiers in the border region," Abbott said.
Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment.
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