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- Migrant families wait for their bus at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas before travelling to meet relatives or sponsors on March 2, 2021. – President Biden announced that he was ending the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) enacted under President Trump that sent asylum seekers back to Mexico as they awaited their trial dates. (Photo by Sergio FLORES / AFP) (Photo by SERGIO FLORES/AFP via Getty Images)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday launched a program that would deploy state national guard troops and other agencies to respond to the burgeoning crisis at the southern border.
Abbott announced that his office has launched Operation Lone Star, which will deploy air, ground, and marine, and tactical border security assets to prevent Mexican criminal organizations from smuggling drugs and people into Texas. The operation will be launched in collaboration with the state’s Department of Public Safety.
“Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in a statement to media outlets on Saturday.
“We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”
This comes as the number of illegal crossings at the southern border continue their steadily rise since October last year. The number of encounters at the southwest border between October 2020 and January 2021 was 296,259, which is up from 164,932 during the same period in 2019 and 2020, according to data from the U.S. Custom and Border Patrol (CBP), representing a 79.6 percent increase.
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