AUSTIN — State lawmakers want Texas’ top leaders to consider a humanitarian and job-focused approach to their initiatives on the border.
State Sen. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, and state Reps. Ryan Guillen, R-Rio Grande City, and Eddie Morales, D-Eagle Pass, spoke at a border panel at the annual Texas Tribune Festival, often called TribFest, on Saturday.
Blanco and Morales said they champion state leaders doing something at the border because they believe the federal government is absent, but they said they wish the state would funnel some of the $9 billion that has been allocated to the state’s border operation — known as Operation Lone Star — for work beyond boots on the ground.
“I wish our state would do more for humanitarian logistical support — more than busing — to make sure migrants are healthy, vaccinated, if they want it, have housing (and) sufficient food,” Blanco said. “It shouldn’t rest on the cities of El Paso or Rio Grande.”
Launched in March 2021, Operation Lone Star, or OLS, is the military mission along the Texas-Mexico border to address illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Some of the measures under the operation include deploying thousands of state national guards to the border to assist in the detaining of undocumented immigrants, as well as placing large buoys in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass.
Blanco said he is concerned the state is not taking the right approach when it comes to dealing with the influx of migrants if it does not include a humanitarian component.
“There are technologies that we can utilize as a state that could be implemented that are effective and not as costly and are more humane,” he said.
Morales proposed one idea to bring order to the border. He recommends the state launch a program that gives migrants who come to the land ports of entry a radio frequency identification, or RFID.
With this, the migrant would be charged a fee of $2,000, for example — which Morales said they already pay coyotes to bring them across the border illegally — as well as annual fees. This revenue would help the state recoup some of the money it has lost in OLS, he said.
The ID card, which would not allow the person to vote, would allow them to work — opening up more job options —and also would serve as a credit card so that the money the individual generates from work can be deposited somewhere.
He said with average crossing data, the program would generate $3.2 million a day, or $1.2 billion in annual revenue.
Although immigration is a federal responsibility, Morales said he believes there is a way the state can carve out the program while also following federal laws.
“This is one of those few ideas of actually creating revenue while also eliminating an industry that we perpetuated and created by leaving it to the cartels and the human smugglers (to move desperate migrants),” Morales said. “We need to think outside the box.”