Abbott Announces a Plan for a Military Base Camp on the Border

Governor Greg Abbott announced Friday that a permanent military installation will be built along the Texas-Mexican border. The governor described it as a Forward Operating Base.

Abbott held a press conference at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass. The park is being used as a staging area for the National Guard troops and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) who took control of the area when Abbott seized the city land. 

Building the military operation is part of Operation Lone Star, the border security initiative the governor put into place in March 2021. Operation Lone Star will continue as long as the Biden administration refuses to do its job to secure the border.

This will be a permanent facility which means the Texas National Guard troops that are deployed there will not be leaving the area any time soon. The base will initially have the capacity to hold 1,800 Guard troops and capacity will expand to being able to accommodate 2,300 troops. It will be paid for by Texas taxpayers, who fund Operation Lone Star, but he didn’t say what the price tag will be. What he did say was that the base would eliminate the state’s expense of hotel rooms and other costs for DPS troopers and the National Guard troops.

“This will increase the ability for a larger number of Texas military department personnel in Eagle Pass to operate more effectively and more efficiently,” Abbott said.

“If we have surge needs, it will include individual rooms for soldiers,” he said. “It’ll provide a large dining facility, recreation theaters (and) things like Wi Fi.”

“The Texas National Guard (is) going above and beyond to make sure that they are showing the way that Texas will defend itself from the lawlessness that’s been created by Joe Biden’s refusal to follow the laws in the United States Congress,” Abbott said.

“They have been living in conditions that were atypical for military operations,” he said. “And now, because of the magnitude of what we’re doing, because of the need to sustain and actually expand our efforts of what we’re doing, it’s essential that we build this base camp.”

During the event on Friday, the governor announced that the first stage of construction of the base is underway. It is being built on about 80 acres near Shelby Park. It will be an improvement in conditions for the troops along the border. 

Abbott has made three trips to Eagle Pass in the past two weeks for border security events. He hosted Republican governors, for example, for a private briefing about the border crisis and held a press conference with them. Abbott insists that states have the constitutional authority to take action if a state is under invasion. Invasion is how Abbott describes the magnitude of illegal border crossings.

The Biden administration is suing Texas over what it calls encroachment of the federal government’s authority to set immigration and border policy. Abbott’s position is that the Biden administration is not doing its job so Texas has to do it. 

The forward operating base will allow a larger deployment of troops at the border. It will accommodate troops from other states, too, who are being deployed by their Republican governors.

The camp, which will include a 700-seat dining facility, a gym, a laundry and medical services, will save on hotel costs for the existing deployment. And it will presumably make way for additional states that are sending troops to help patrol the border as part of a widening rift between Republican governors and the federal government over border enforcement.

I expect the latest action will bring legal challenges from the Biden administration. Biden doesn’t want to do his duty as president to protect the borders and the homeland but he doesn’t want Texas to do the job, either. It is unacceptable for Biden to expect Governor Abbott to just sit back and allow the chaos to continue unchecked.

A new law that is set to go into effect on March 5 that will allow state and local police officers to arrest illegal immigrants before removing them is facing a legal challenge from the Biden administration. A federal judge in Austin heard three hours of arguments on Thursday. 

The Biden administration contends that the law conflicts with federal law and violates the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal government authority over immigration matters. The state countered that their law mirrored federal law in most respects but represented a necessary further deterrent to unauthorized migration.

That is one legal challenge by the administration. There are others which include the placement of a buoy barrier in the Rio Grande River in the Eagle Pass area. There is also a legal battle happening over the state’s use of razor wire to prevent illegal immigrants from coming into Texas.

This is Biden’s America. A country without borders is not a country. There is no sovereignty. He doesn’t care. Biden is forever changing the United States and not in a good way. It’s intentional.