Texas Military Deploys Additional Troops to Border Ahead of Title 42 End

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the deployment of an additional 545 National Guardsmen to assist in the newest surge of migrants crossing the border from Mexico. The deployment under the state’s Operation Lone Star comes days ahead of the expected May 11 end of the Title 42 migrant expulsion program.

“These additional forces will bolster the thousands of Texas National Guard service members already assisting local and state law enforcement agencies to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal behavior between the ports of entry,” Texas Military Department officials said in a written statement. “We have expanded our capabilities to include boat teams that patrol hundreds of river miles, drones and helicopters that detect illicit activity from the air, and brush teams, security points, and roving patrols that block and interdict illegal smuggling (drugs, weapons, and people) into Texas.”

On Sunday, Border Patrol agents in the five Texas-based sectors apprehend more than 5,100 migrants who crossed the border from Mexico, according to a law enforcement source. This represents nearly 60 percent of the nearly 8,700 who crossed along the entire southwest border with Mexico.

The number of migrants crossing the border from Mexico surged last week ahead of this week’s expected end to the CDC’s Title 42 migrant expulsion protocol. On Friday and Saturday, the number of apprehensions exceeded 9,000 per day, Breitbart Texas reported.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz reported the apprehension of 54,951 migrants during the preceding seven-day period. In addition, another 18,698 migrants were classified as “got-aways.”

So far this fiscal year, agents apprehended nearly 1.4 million migrants along the southwest border, according to a law enforcement official. Migrant got-aways jumped to nearly 453,000 bringing the total number of known border crossers this fiscal year to more than 1.8 million migrants in less than seven months.