The image of a Venezuelan mother crawling with her baby in her arms, covered by cardboard so that the barbed wire placed by Texas authorities doesn't hurt her child, reflects both the tragedy of those forced to leave their countries of origin and the harshness with which destination nations try to stop undocumented migration.
The video, circulating on social media, captures one of the many episodes happening under the shadow of Operation Lone Star (OLS), a joint initiative by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department, launched in March 2021 by Governor Greg Abbott, who attributes the increase in border crossings to President Biden’s policies.
According to the governor’s office, the goal is to “detect and repel illegal crossings, arrest human traffickers and cartel members, and stop the flow of deadly drugs like fentanyl into the United States.”
Border security measures include the construction of floating barriers on the Rio Grande, barbed wire from El Paso to Brownsville, and a border wall in Val Verde County and the Eagle Pass military base.
As often happens in these cases, the operation has expanded beyond the border, with more than 13,600 arrests made in non-border counties, many of them hundreds of miles from the nearest entry point.
These arrests can only be explained by the recurrence of racial profiling practices: since you look like a migrant, you’re arrested and charged. Data from the Office of Court Administration (OCA) shows that 70 percent of the charges brought before courts have been minor offenses. Few have been related to drugs, human trafficking, or weapons charges—the crimes the operation supposedly aims to prevent.
Operation Lone Star has cost over $11 billion, a high amount that might have been more productive if applied differently, especially considering that the United States has been enforcing physical and virtual wall policies on the border with Mexico for 30 years.
Indeed, the first action of this kind, Operation Gatekeeper, began on October 1, 1994, during Bill Clinton's presidency, at the Imperial Beach station.
After three decades of walls on our northern border, we can affirm that they have been scarcely effective and effectively counterproductive. Migrants, increasingly from more countries, continue to attempt the crossing: some succeed, others are detected and returned to Mexico, and some die—one per day on average—in the deserts, rivers, and mountains of the border region. This has been the case since 1994. Daily deaths from hypothermia, heatstroke, dehydration, or drowning.
And the governor of Texas thinks he’s an innovator with Operation Lone Star. No. That policy has failed, at an extremely high human cost.
BY MAURICIO FARAH
HUMAN RIGHTS SPECIALIST
@MFARAHG