The border crisis reached unprecedented levels under the Biden-Harris administration. Still, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel: President-elect Donald Trump will soon begin his second term as president of the United States, and he has made it clear that on day one he will secure our southern border.
Well, I’m here to help.
You may have read earlier last week that I sent a letter to Trump in my capacity as the Texas Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO), offering over 1,400 acres of state-owned land to construct deportation staging areas and facilities for criminal illegal immigrants.
We are not stopping there. I am now extending my initial offer to include state-owned land we have identified in El Paso and elsewhere in the state for these critical purposes as well.
The federal government under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris has not only allowed but facilitated an invasion of violent illegal immigrants into my state and country, and I am here to say the invasion ends on January 20 when Trump returns to the presidency.
The stakes are simply too high. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 illegal aliens with a criminal history on ICE’s national docket. Of those, 435,719 were convicted criminals, and 226,847 had pending criminal charges. Only a scant 14,994 of them were in federal custody. The rest have been allowed to continue to harm our people and their property with impunity.
This complete failure to protect our citizens has led to the loss of innocent young Americans like Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley and Lizbeth Medina. Under Trump, no longer will the rape and murder of our sons and daughters be brushed off in the name of “tolerance.”
While blue-state elected officials are already devising plans to protect violent illegal immigrants from deportation, Texas and our General Land Office are united with President-elect Trump.
This is why we have created “The Jocelyn Initiative,” in which the GLO will locate all land under my jurisdiction that the federal government can use for deportation operations of criminal illegal immigrants.
Just last month, my office closed on a new 1,402-acre ranch near the border in Starr County. Within a day of closing on the property, we authorized the construction of a state border wall on this land. We also signed a continued Right of Entry Agreement with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) earlier this year, authorizing DPS to continue operating and maintaining temporary border fencing on state-owned properties in Starr County, a hotbed for illegal immigration.
The reality is that American citizens are not the only ones being victimized by our dangerously open border. Human trafficking has led to hundreds of thousands of missing migrant children. This is a tragedy that has been aided and abetted by our own government under Biden, and it must stop.
Notably, for the first time in 132 years, the citizens of Starr County, Texas, who have been placed on the frontlines of this border crisis, voted Republican. The flipping of this historically blue county is a resounding response to the elitist D.C. Democrats who have turned their backs on these children and our own kids like Jocelyn Nungaray. Texas has not and will not.
With the help of our local, state and incoming federal partners, we can continue to deal major blows to the trafficking of exploited women and children, deadly drugs, and dangerous criminals across our border to keep our families safe.
It is my hope and prayer that no parent will ever have to live with the guttural realization that their child’s death or victimization could have been prevented.
I am thankful for Trump’s return, and I know that together, we are going to finally secure our border, ending the criminal and humanitarian crises that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have allowed for far too long.
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, M.D., brings a lifetime of experience to the Texas General Land Office (GLO). In 2016, she became the first Republican elected to the Texas State Senate from Travis County and the first woman to represent Texas Senate District 24. She later made history again in 2022, winning a statewide election to become the state’s first female Land Commissioner.
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