Texas migrant crackdown is targeting Latino drivers, data shows 

Texas state highway troopers pulling over local drivers in search of smugglers or undocumented immigrants are disproportionately targeting Latinos, new data shows.  

As part of Operation Lone Star, Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign against illegal immigration, the governor declared 53 counties close to the border as disaster areas due to the large number of border crossings they were seeing.

To thwart the illegal crossings, Abbott sent state troopers, sheriff’s officers, and National Guard members to “arrest, detain, and prosecute people on criminal trespassing charges, to intercept drug traffickers and smugglers and turn them over to federal immigration officials,” reported NBC News. 

However, local residents have complained that officers are mostly stopping people who fit a stereotype, particularly local Latino drivers.  

“What if I don’t carry my driver’s license and I can’t prove I’m an American citizen?” said Anita Anaya, who was stopped three months ago in a border town. 

An NBC News analysis of DPS data shows that the deployment of state troopers in border counties has surged in the previous year, many times doubling the number of officers in a town. For example, in Kinney County, home to 3,674 residents, the number of officers increased from 14 to 41. 

However, the analysis shows that troopers have disproportionately increased in Latino-majority border counties. 

“More than half of the Latino-majority counties on or near the border saw above-average increases in troopers, while none of the three white-majority counties did,” reported NBC news. 

"The white-majority counties on or near the border saw a 60% increase in troopers, from 25 to 40, working there. Among Latino-majority counties on or near the border, that increase was 92%, from 438 troopers working in 2019-2020 to 845 in 2021," the analysis added.

Additionally, residents complained that the number of citations has increased as more officers have been hired to work in their towns. In Kinney County, for example, citations more than quadrupled in the last year, from 1,400 in the fiscal year 2019-2020, to more than 6,800 in the fiscal year 2021-2022. 

With the increasing number of people being pulled over, residents are claiming that they are losing their freedom and civil liberties, since many times they are being stopped and questioned without probable cause. 

“I never had this problem before this border situation came into their minds. We were just a regular little sleepy town and all of a sudden now, it’s pursuits everywhere and that’s because there are so many, a flood of law enforcement officers here,” said Richard Gonzalez.