All Republican members of the Texas congressional delegation sent a letter to the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security urging the agencies to reimburse the state for money spent securing the border during the Biden administration’s tenure.
Friday’s letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requested that the DOJ and DHS release the funds contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill and reimburse Texas for its spending of more than $11 billion on border security efforts during the border crisis created by the Biden administration.
“Texas’s actions through Operation Lone Star were absolutely vital to ensuring the safety and security of Americans across our great country,” reads the letter. “However, our State should not have had to bear alone the costs of securing the border when former President Biden intentionally failed to do so.”
The letter goes on to ask the DOJ and DHS to prioritize the disbursement of funds to Texas for its efforts to protect Americans from “illegal immigration and drug trafficking under former President Biden’s disastrous leadership.”
Lawmakers pointed out that “the State of Texas built miles of border wall and buoy barriers and deployed personnel to maintain border infrastructure and apprehend illegal aliens, gang members, and other criminals.”
In March 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star to combat the tremendous influx of illegal aliens across the southern border. At the start of the operation, Abbott explained that “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.”
He added, “We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”
