"Today Texas launched Operation Lone Star to respond to the border crisis," Abbott tweeted Saturday. "It deploys Nat'l Guard + DPS Officers + air, ground, marine, & tactical border security assets to deny Mexican Cartels & smugglers the ability to move drugs & people into Texas."
Operation Lone Star will "combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas," which Abbott said is an issue that has been exacerbated by the Biden administration.
"The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration," said Abbott. "Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis."
Border patrol officials are anticipating 117,000 unaccompanied children will arrive at the border in 2021. Officials are expecting to have encountered nearly 400,000 people crossing the border between October 2020 through February.
The Biden administration last week denied a crisis is occurring on the border, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas instead describing the situation as a "challenge."
"The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are working around the clock seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border — that we manage the challenge, as acute as the challenge is," Mayorkas said.
President Biden asked senior officials later last week to travel to the border in order to brief him on the matter.
"President Biden has asked senior members of his team to travel to the border region in order to provide a full briefing to him on the government response to the influx of unaccompanied minors and an assessment of additional steps that can be taken to ensure the safety and care of these children," White House spokesman Vedant Patel said.
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