Is Texas spending $800M to create its own border patrol?
June 16, 2015
Is Texas spending $800M to create its own border patrol?
By SETH ROBBINS and PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press
MCALLEN, Texas
When former Gov. Rick Perry ordered a big reinforcement of security at the Mexico border in 2011, Texas bought six new gunboats that can fire 900 rounds a minute and clock highway speeds. But the boats, which cost $580,000 each, spent more time docked than patrolling the Rio Grande.
That was a small price tag compared with what Texas is about to spend. The new Republican governor, Greg Abbott, this month approved $800 million for border security over the next two years more than double any similar period during Perry's 14 years in office.
On Texas' shopping list is a second $7.5 million high-altitude plane to scan the border, a new border crime data center, a 5,000-acre training facility for border law-enforcement agencies and grants for year-round helicopter flights. The state also wants to hire two dozen Texas Rangers to investigate public corruption along the border and 250 new state troopers as a down payment on a permanent force along the border.
Other states along the nearly 2,000-mile Southwest border New Mexico, Arizona and California do not come remotely close to the resources Texas has committed. And Texas is doing so long after last year's surge in immigrants crossing the border illegally has subsided.
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