Activists and human rights organizations have expressed their rejection of the programs against irregular immigration that the governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott, has undertaken, including the initiative to offer rewards for information that allows to detect hiding houses in the state, in the framework of Operation Lone Star.
“The money must come from state funds in any form. And that is something that we would say is illegal and again it is proof that things like Operation Lone Star have nothing to do with keeping the border safe, they have nothing to do with keeping us Texans safe,” he explained to the voice of america Alicia Torres, from the Grassroots Leadership organization.
In early April, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) published an ad offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the location of “hideout houses” where immigrants are usually housed by coyotes.
The department announced it was “working to identify stash houses, pill pressing operations, methamphetamine conversion labs and more.”
The police agency says it has the objective of “combatting transnational criminal activity,” which includes “detaining criminals involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, and people smuggling.”
The immigration question continues to be a matter of high politics for Washington. President Joe Biden promised before reaching the White House to tackle the fundamental causes of irregular immigration that comes from Central America, the Caribbean and Latin America, mainly, but he has met with fierce Republican opposition, which has made it impossible to legislate in this regard federal level.
“While President Biden refuses to do his job and enforce immigration laws, Texas is taking unprecedented steps to protect Americans and secure our southern border,” Governor Abbott said recently.
Migration and fentanyl, in the crosshairs
This Friday Abbott published a briefreport with numbers of arrests of irregular immigrants, as well as seizures of fentanyl, a drug that causes more than 100,000 deaths in the US each year.
“Since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the multi-agency effort has led to more than 365,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 27,000 criminal arrests, with more than 24,000 reported felony charges. In the fight against fentanyl, DPS has seized more than 380 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this border mission,” the report states.
Some 261 hideout houses have been discovered since the operation began.
However, global human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), have strongly criticized these procedures to detain immigrants.
“In the first 16 months of Operation Lone Star, at least 30 people were killed and 71 injured in high-speed vehicle chases,” accused this week HRW, citing figures and testimony from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a letter to the Department of Justice.
Abbott has been criticized for having given powers to local authorities for immigration control since March 2021, when launching the controversial operation that has targeted those who are seen as Hispanic, especially in border areas between Mexico and the US.
“In El Paso, it has already caused at least two situations where migrants died while being persecuted by state police officers,” he told the VOA Fernando Garcia, of the Border Network for Human Rights.
Other institutions such as the Washington Office on Latin American Affairs and the Migration Policy Institute have also criticized the Republican initiative in Texas.
Alicia Torres, instead, considers that it is a partisan issue “a political agenda full of hate” by the state government, in the person of Abbott, he concluded.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channelYoutubeand activate notifications, or follow us on social networks: Facebook, Twitter and instagram.
