Texas offers 1,400-acre ranch to Trump to use as part of mass deportation plan
EL PASO, Texas – After years of Texas being the first stop for people illegally crossing the border, Lone Star State officials are volunteering to let President-elect Donald Trump use a state ranch as the last place immigrants set foot on American soil before being forcibly deported.On Tuesday, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered Trump a 1,400-acre ranch near the border in South Texas to host a mass deportation facility. Buckingham bought the ranch earlier this year, she said, because the previous owner refused to let Texas build a border wall across it.
"I am committed to using every available means at my disposal to gain complete operational security of our border," Buckingham wrote to Trump, saying the land was available to process, detain and deport "violent criminals."
Trump campaigned on a promise that he will launch the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. In a statement, his transition office said the Trump-Vance administration remains committed to swift action.
While Trump has repeatedly said he plans to target violent criminal offenders, he has also said the deportations could target as many as 20 million people ‒ far more than the number with criminal records.
The previous largest mass deportation, in the 1950s, removed more than 1 million people, mostly Mexicans but also U.S. citizens, in a roundup from California to Chicago. Some experts say it's likely the new deportation effort would target not just violent criminal offenders, but also people who have lived in the U.S. for years but lack the proper paperwork.
“Local and state officials on the front lines of the Harris-Biden border invasion have been suffering for four years and are eager for President Trump to return to the Oval Office," said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman. "On Day 1, President Trump will marshal every lever of power to secure the border, protect their communities, and launch the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrant criminals in history."
The ranch in Starr County lies within the U.S. Border Patrol's Rio Grande Sector, which in 2022 and 2023 routinely saw more than 40,000 migrant encounters per month.
Migrant encounters have plummeted over the past year in the Rio Grande sector, across Texas and all along the U.S.-Mexico border, after the Biden-Harris administration sharply restricted access to asylum in June and Mexico stepped up its own border enforcement efforts. Texas officials also take credit for the drop, and last month the Rio Grande Sector Border Patrol reported just over 5,000 border crossers.
Texas transitions from border adversary to ally
The ranch land offer is on brand for a state that has repeatedly tried to push the federal government into action on the border, from clearing the way for Trump's border wall to busing migrants to New York, Denver and Chicago.
It also reflects a change from the adversarial relationship Texas had with the outgoing Biden-Harris administration, which American voters widely believe failed to secure the border despite a sharp decline in illegal crossings over the past year.
Texas has spent more than $11 billion in taxpayer money since 2021 on its own border security effort, known as Operation Lone Star.
"Until the federal government steps up and does its job to secure the border, Texas will continue utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to the border crisis and protect Texans," Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, told Paste BN last week.
Other states have responded, too. Over the past three years, 21 Republican states have sent their National Guards and law enforcement to the Texas border, according to a count provided by Abbott's office. Among them is Trump's pick for Homeland Security secretary, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who was the first governor to send National Guard soldiers to the Mexican border.
Democratic cities, states preparing for immigration battle
At the same time, Democrat-led cities and states around the country are working to fortify protections for immigrant communities ahead of Trump's inauguration. Many Democrats agree that migrants who have committed violent crimes should be deported, but worry Trump's promises of a military-assisted effort will also sweep up families and children, and those who have requested asylum.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special legislative session for December to secure resources to challenge Trump's agenda in court. Chicago's Board of Education passed a resolution reaffirming its commitment to protecting immigrant students of varying legal status, while New York City's immigrant affairs commissioner vowed the city will uphold its sanctuary laws protecting immigrants.
Michael Kagan, who runs the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Immigration Clinic, said many immigrant rights groups are skeptical that Trump's mass deportations will only target violent criminal offenders. But to reach the high number of deportations he's promised, would likely require targeting nonviolent immigrants, experts said.
"He does have a lot of supporters clamoring to see busloads of people taken away and deported, but he can't actually fill those buses if he's just looking at violent criminal offenders," Kagan said. Immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than people born in the U.S., statistics show.
"When (Trump) says mass deportations, if he's driven by numbers he'll have to deport undocumented immigrants living in American communities, your neighbors ... regular people who just don't have paperwork," he said. "And have to say I don't think that even some Trump voters want that to happen."
Kagan said the offer of the ranch by Texas represents a building block toward a wholesale change in how Americans view immigration and the border.
"Under Biden, the focus was always driven by the border. By definition, people arriving at the border are strangers. But Trump is changing that debate and now the focus is turning to immigrants who have been living in our communities for a long time," Kagan said. "Some of the voters who supported Trump might not feel that's what they expected."