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Austin, TX, 3 hours ago Texas law enforcement has apprehended more than a quarter-million illegal aliens via Operation Lone Star, including thousands of criminal arrests and weapons seizures, according to a recent update from the office of Gov. Greg Abbott.

During the operation, there have been 264,000 migrant apprehensions and over 16,000 arrests of accused criminal aliens. There have been almost 14,000 felony charges filed.

The governors office also reported $41.5 million in currency seizures and more than 5,000 confiscations of weapons.

Abbott held a news conference at Anzalduas Park in Mission last week to address caravans approaching the southern border.

Fox News reported that the Mexican government disbursed a caravan of more than 10,000 individuals, most of whom are from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, after offering thousands of them temporary Mexican visas. Many of them were still en route to the U.S. after receiving the documentation.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported the highest number of enforcement encounters with illegal aliens in May than in any other month in the federal governments history.

Texas National Guard Maj. Gen. Ronald W. Burkett II commented on some of the infrastructural measures the state has taken.

The National Guard practices mass-migration responses both with and without DPS and law enforcement to demonstrate we have those capabilities at any time, day or night, Burkett said. Engineers are also responsible for establishing additional barriers to deter illegal migrant events. Nearly 40 miles of standard fencing have been erected, as well as 18 miles of concertina wire along the border.

Though Abbott has been criticized by those who say Operation Lone Star goes too far, he has also been deridedby critics who say he has done too little to deter illegal crossings.

In an interview with The Texan, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX-21) repeated his call for declaring illegal immigration an invasion and said that Abbott is responsible for handling the risk that goes with it.

Its a risk we need to take. Were talking about law enforcement which law enforcement would be open and amenable to it? Roy said. Talk to sheriffs in South Texas who are saying, You know what? Ill do it. Have we talked to people who might volunteer? Maybe theres veterans, maybe theres retired police officers.

The governor has contended that state officials enforcing immigration law could be ineffective and result in federal prosecutions. Roy argued that it is up to the state to find ways to protect those individuals from litigation.

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State Officials Have Arrested More Than 260000 Illegal Immigrants via Operation Lone Star - The Texan

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Wednesday that it conducted a national operation focusing on removing illegal immigrants who had been deported but then re-entered the U.S.

ICE said that its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) nabbed 119 illegal immigrants between June 1 and June 7 who had re-entered after a prior deportation. The agency said in a release that it focused on picking up those who had been removed within the last five years -- and who also meet the narrow priorities set by the Biden administration.

FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN BIDEN ADMIN'S NARROWING OF ICE ARREST, DEPORTATION PRIORITIES

Those priorities were rolled out last year and restricts agents to three categories of illegal immigrant: recent border crossers, national security threats and aggravated felons or public safety threats.

ICE said that of those arrested, 110 had prior convictions for crimes including burglary, robbery, child molestation and drug trafficking.

"ICE is committed to the safe and effective enforcement of the nations immigration laws as our officers fulfill our important public safety mission," acting ICE Director Tae Johnson said in a statement. "This operation highlights the tremendous efforts of our officers to apply an organized and methodical approach to the identification, location, and arrest of noncitizens who are national security, public safety, or border security threats."

June 2, 2022: ICE agents conduct an enforcement operation in the U.S. interior. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

The narrowed priorities, first rolled out last year, caused pushback from Republicans who say they are too narrow and led to a dramatic reduction in deportations and arrests of those in the country illegally.

In FY 2021, which included the final months of the Trump administration, ICE arrested 74,082 noncitizens in FY 2021, and deported 59,011. Of the 74,082 arrests between October 2020 and October 2021, only 47,755 took place after Feb. 18 when the new priorities were implemented. Of removals, just 28,677 of the 59,011 deportations took place after Feb. 18.

ICE ISSUES POLICY TO CONSIDER IMMIGRANTS' MILITARY SERVICE BEFORE TAKING ENFORCEMENT ACTION

In FY 2020, there were 103,603 arrests and 185,884 removals. In FY 2019 the agency arrested 143,099 illegal immigrants and deported 267,258.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has indicated that the lower removals and arrests are a feature, not a bug, of the new policy.

"We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior," Mayorkas declared in an interview with CBS News in January. "For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen's unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.

EX-ICE OFFICIALS PUSH BACK ON MAYORKAS CLAIM THAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WILL BE DEPORTED PROMPTLY'

However, just days after the latest operation was conducted, a federal judge in Texas barred the administration from using the priorities, ruling that the guidance "provides a new basis on which aliens may avoid being subject to the enforcement of immigration law."

It is therefore a rule and subject also to the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and therefore subject to certain conditions, like a notice-and-comment period. He also said that the government fell short in reconciling the guidance with federal law, which demands the detention in certain situations.

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He said the government "offers an implausible construction of federal law that flies in the face of the limitations imposed by Congress."

"True, the Executive Branch has case-by-case discretion to abandon immigration enforcement as to a particular individual, he said. "This case, however, does not involve individualized decisionmaking. Instead, this case is about a rule that binds Department of Homeland Security officials in a generalized, prospective mannerall in contravention of Congresss detention mandate."

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, with a focus on immigration. He can be reached at adam.shaw2@fox.com or on Twitter: @AdamShawNY

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ICE nabs 119 illegal immigrants, most with prior convictions, who had re-entered after being deported - Fox News

In early April, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott unveiled a controversial plan to send buses full of undocumented immigrants to Washington, D.C. The policy, Abbott said, would "help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants."

But it turns out those communities might be stuck footing the hefty bill for Abbott's busing scheme. According to state records obtained by DallasFort Worth's NBC 5, bussing costs came out to over $1.6 million in April and May. With 1,154 migrants transported during that period, the per-rider cost was roughly $1,400.

That's far more expensive than a commercial bus or train ticket would've costa one-way journey from El Paso, Texas, to Washington, D.C., runs somewhere between $200 and $300 as of this article's writing. It's also more expensive than a first-class plane ticket from a border town to Washington, which NBC 5 reported ranged between $800 and $900. And it's more than the public spends on average to transport a student to school for an entire school year.

NBC 5 notes that costs are so high in part because the state has hired security guards to staff each bus. "Security-related expenses alone topped $1 million in the early weeks of the program, according to [Texas Division of Emergency Management] records," it explains. Costs are further inflated by the fact that buses drive back to Texas from Washington empty, having dropped off their passengers. Texas, however, gets billed for all total mileage.

The governor's office launched an online donation page to help fund the project after being "overwhelmed with phone calls, with letters, with requests" offering help. It also did so after mounting criticism that the effort would be funded by Texas taxpayers. But private donations have been minimal, totaling just $112,842 as of May 27. That discrepancy suggests taxpayers may end up on the hook for much of the busing bill.

The initiative's outcomes likely haven't been what Abbott desired, either. The political ripples in Washington have been minimal. And migrants themselves ended up better off, transported from the relatively remote border communities in Texas to D.C., where volunteers and immigrant advocacy organizations were ready to help. Organizers gathered at Washington's Union Station to welcome migrants, feed them, and connect them with housing and medical care. From The New York Times:

"In a way, it's actually perfect," said Bilal Askaryar, a spokesman for Welcome With Dignity, a collective of about 100 local and national groups that helps migrants. "Unintentionally, Governor Abbott sent them to one of the best places in the nation to welcome people."

Santo Linarte Lpez, a migrant from Nicaragua, had only $45 left from the $1,500 he had raised for his monthlong trip to the U.S. border. He said he did not understand why Mr. Abbott was paying for him to travel north, but he was grateful.

Abbott's busing plan is by no mean his only expensive anti-immigrant endeavor. He vowed last year to build a wall along his state's border with Mexico, initially transferring $250 million in state revenues to the project as a "down payment." A donation page for the wall has collected $55,322,273 as of May 27unlikely to make a significant dent, given that a section of former President Donald Trump's border wall in Texas came out to $27 million a mile. Abbott's border-securing mission, Operation Lone Star, costs taxpayers over $2.5 million per week. That effort also left hundreds of migrants in pretrial detention for weeks or months over misdemeanor trespassing charges, as Reason's Scott Shackford has reported.

Abbott has long used migrants as political pawns, and it looks as though taxpayers, too, will continue to be burdened with the costs of his immigration enforcement plans.

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Texas Governor Abbott's Very Expensive Plan To Bus Migrants to DC - Reason

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Sen. John Cornyns, R-Texas, office on Wednesday denied that a bipartisan immigration bill is in the works after comments he made on the Senate floor that his staff say were a joke, but that sparked uproar from conservatives.

Cornyn, who frequently attempts to find bipartisan paths for legislation on a range of issues that includes immigration, was on the Senate floor Tuesday evening as the chamber advanced bipartisan gun legislation that he had helped shepherd.

SENATE VOTES TO ADVANCE BIPARTISAN GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION

HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic tweeted that Cornyn was smiling as he told California Sen. Alex Padilla: "First guns, now its immigration." Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was said to have added "Thats right, were going to do it."

Cornyns reported comments drew swift backlash from the right, many of whom were already angered by his support for the gun legislation which advanced 64-34 in the split chamber.

Cornyn has previously backed bipartisan immigration efforts, including a border security bill, which he introduced with Sen. Sinema to combat the migrant crisis at the southern border. He has also backed a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who came to the country as children and who were eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance said on Fox News "Ingraham Angle" that it would be "catastrophic" for the Republican Party to "advance amnesty."

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, arrives to meet with Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., arrive for more bipartisan talks on how to rein in gun violence, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 15, 2022. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

"The worst thing that we can do as a party right now in the midst of a historic immigration crisis is to advance amnesty. And if we do it, we will get crushed and we will deserve it."

SEN. CORNYN DEFENDS BIPARTISAN GUN DEAL AFTER CONSERVATIVE CRITICISM OF PROPOSED 'RED FLAG LAWS'

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, appeared to distance himself from any such efforts: "Amnesty is a non starter with me and wont be taken up by a House Republican majority," he told Axios.

Groups calling for lower immigration groups also came out in opposition of any such moves:

"What a weird way for @JohnCornyn to announce that he never wants to become @SenateGOP Majority Leader," the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) tweeted, in reference to reports that Cornyn could succeed Leader Mitch McConnell.

But a spokesperson for Cornyn denied that an immigration bill was on the table.

"No, the tweet is not accurate," spokesperson Drew Brandewie told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. "It was a joke. Theres no immigration bill."

It is the latest sign that bipartisan efforts on broad immigration reform measures that included pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants, once supported by a number of Republican lawmakers in both chambers, are struggling to gain any traction amid a historic border crisis that saw more than 239,000 migrant encounters in May alone.

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After the Biden administration introduced a broad immigration framework at the beginning of last year that included amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, even Republicans who had previously been open to a reform bill dismissed it as a non-starter.

Democrats later sought to include a number of amnesty proposals in its budget reconciliation framework, but they were found to be inappropriate for inclusion by the Senate parliamentarian -- and the reconciliation bill stalled in general after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said he would not support it.

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, with a focus on immigration. He can be reached at adam.shaw2@fox.com or on Twitter: @AdamShawNY

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Cornyn's office denies bipartisan immigration bill in the works amid conservative uproar - Fox News

The first Summit of the Americas hosted in the United States since 1994 was by most accounts a wet firecracker. The White House followed that dud by announcing the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protectiona nothing-burger charitably described by Politico as a non-binding migration blueprint.

The announcement framed the declaration as bold, using the word twice in the opening section (bold actions and a suite of bold new migration-related deliverables). Whats bold about them is that the Biden administration is now creating yet more legal pathways for people to enter and remain in this country, while still keeping the border open for illegal entry. Focused on assisting migrants and the countries they come from and pass through, the declaration says nothing about trying to stop the uncontrolled flow crossing our southern border.

Concerning the estimated 5 million Venezuelans who have already fled the Maduro regimes oppression and economic mismanagement, the declaration states that Columbia will grant up to 1.5 million regularization permits. Ecuador will do something similar for a smaller number. Costa Rica will extend temporary status for refugees from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, and tiny Belize promises to regularize a number of illegally-present Central Americans and Caribbeans there. As for the United States, we will provide $25 million to a World Bank program and $314 million in foreign aid to assist other countries legalization efforts.

To change the way people migrate, the declaration vows to expand legal pathways. What this means in practice is letting more people in legally while legalizing those present illegally. For its part, Canada will take in up to 4,000 refugees by 2028. (For perspective, thats about half the number of people crossing illegally into the U.S. each day.) More significantly, Canada will allow in 50,000 agricultural workers from Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean this year. Ottawa also agreed to invest $26.9 million toward vague goals like migration and protection related capacity building, while advancing gender equality and inclusive economic growth. Mexico will allow up to 40,000 more temporary workers from countries to its south and integrate 20,000 more refugees. Collectively, this is not exactly game-changing.

There are no guarantees that any of the Central American or Caribbean migrants given temporary refuge by countries to our north or south wont later decide to try their luck crossing into the United States. This happened last fall when about 15,000 illegal aliens massed under the Del Rio International Bridge. Many were Haitians who had already been resettled by other countries such as Costa Rica, but the Haitians ditched their resettlement documents to pursue asylum here. Migrants who have been safely resettled elsewhere and then try to enter the United States illegally should be returned to that third country and barred for a determined period from seeking any immigration benefits in the United States.

No such restriction appears in the declaration. Instead, it commits the United States to spend $65 million to support U.S. farmers hiring agricultural workers under the H2A program, then promises (an already promised) 11,500 H-2B non-agricultural seasonal worker visas for Central Americans and Haitians. The United States will also issue guidance on Fair Recruitment Practices in cooperation with major U.S. employers such as Walmart.

In the Los Angeles Declaration, the United States commits to resettling 20,000 refugees from the Americas over the next two years: thats roughly the number of illegal crossers U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers encounter every three days. The United States will also increase settlement of Haitian refugees, without specifying a number. Unfortunately, these various increases to the legal pathways are not balanced by any effort to make illegal immigration less attractive. They are unlikely to divert the latest mass caravan of migrants, many thought to be from Venezuela, that was headed north to our border even as the conference was taking place.

The declaration also includes the administrations previously announced plan to restart the Haitian and Cuban Family Reunification Parole Programs. This means that, instead of waiting their turn back home like Indian, Chinese, or Mexican relatives of U.S. citizens, the Cubans and Haitians will get to live and work here while they wait. With twenty-year-plus waiting times for many family members following the legal path, Filipinos will wish their islands were closer to Florida.

The declarations final section, humane border management, comprises only a multilateral Sting Operation as part of ongoing efforts to catch human traffickers, who the Biden administrations own policies are in fact enriching and multiplying, and a contentious change to the asylum process that critics have slammed as illegal, inefficient, and designed to circumvent proper scrutiny of asylum applications.

In short, the declaration does nothing to address the core problem: zero enforcement at our border, which sends a clear signal to smugglers and would-be migrants across the Americas and the Caribbean that our door is wide open. The Biden practice is to allow most illegals to enter, ship them into the interior, and grant them parole until their asylum cases can be adjudicated. With massive backlogs in processing both asylum applications (over 432,000 applications pending at USCIS) and all types of legal immigration benefit applications (over 8.4 million pending), this means that illegal entrants are de facto immigrants, with access to work, education, and other advantages unavailable to most legal visitors. In addition, their presence seriously prolongs the wait time for applicants in the legal immigration line.

The promises made by U.S. and other North and Central American governments in the declaration are dwarfed by the scale of the current migration wave, which is caused by political, economic, and other factors beyond their control. Unless the United States wants to accept unlimited, unregulated immigration forever, at some point our government will have to enforce our laws instead of seeking the chimera of even more legal pathways to absorb the endless flow.

A veteran career foreign service officer, Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Image: Reuters.

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The Los Angeles Declaration Is Bad News for the U.S. Border - The National Interest Online