El Paso County officials say it’s time the state pays for Operation Lone Star arrests

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El Paso County leaders say a recent surge in migrant arrests by the state has cost the border county millions of dollars and spurred them to issue a disaster declaration this week — a move they have avoided for more than two years.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego on Tuesday signed the disaster declaration, a necessary step for the county to become eligible to apply for up to $5 million of grants reserved for local governments that participate in Operation Lone Star, the state’s multi-billion-dollar border security mission.

Gov. Greg Abbott launched the program in March 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office, arguing that the state needed to step up because the federal government wasn’t doing its job to secure the border. The border security mission has resulted in at least 516,300 migrant apprehensions and more than 45,300 criminal arrests across the Texas-Mexico border, according to Abbott’s office.

El Pasoans have been reluctant to align themselves with that mission for fear of sowing distrust in a community known for welcoming new migrants. But the need for state funds has become dire, Samaniego told The Texas Tribune in an interview this week, leaving the county with no choice but to issue the declaration.

“The numbers are just horrendous,” Samaniego said, referring to the number of migrants held in the El Paso County Jail because of Operation Lone Star. The costs of housing, feeding and attending to their medical needs come out of the county’s already-strained budget.

About 2,000 people have been booked into the jail since March 2021 because of the border initiative, according to the county. This year has seen the highest number of arrests, with most detainees charged with human smuggling and some charged with lower-level misdemeanors like rioting or trespassing.

County jails are legally required to accept people arrested by Texas law enforcement officers.

County leaders say all those state inmates have resulted in an $11.7 million loss in revenue the county otherwise would have reaped through a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to hold people arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol or other federal agents.

That contract reimburses the county $110 per day per federal inmate, said Ryan Urrutia, assistant chief deputy for the county sheriff’s office. Basic services cost the county $101 a day, so the county earns a profit of $9 a day on federal inmates, Urrutia said.

The U.S. Marshals Service also reimburses the county for any additional medical costs incurred by federal inmates, but the same has not been true for Operation Lone Star inmates, county officials said. Samaniego said the county has had to pay as much as $30,000 for a state inmate’s dialysis.

Urrutia said the county has relied on that contract for at least two decades to pay for overtime and jail operations, which, along with public safety administration and operating the county courts, make up nearly 70% of the county’s budget, which is $601.4 million this year. The county expects to receive $18.5 million less from the federal contract in fiscal year 2025 compared to fiscal year 2022.

The disaster declaration comes as the county prepares to move into budget season with a nearly $35 million budget shortfall, according to County Commissioner David Stout. He said the county’s finances have become increasingly strained as the state has saddled counties with more unfunded mandates over the years, such as forcing the county to hold migrants detained at the border without compensating them for the associated costs.

“They have put us in a very precarious situation financially,” Stout said. “If the federal government can reimburse us for their inmates, I don’t understand why the state can’t.”

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the OLS grant program, but the application period appears to have closed for this fiscal year. Samaniego said he is hopeful the office will still accept the county’s application.

In 2021, the state gave $36.4 million to at least 12 counties participating in OLS. Another $30 million was offered to cities and counties in July 2022.

“There’s no crisis”

Counties across the state have relied on agreements to hold federal inmates to profit off of unused jail beds, a tactic that has been criticized by advocates of incarcerated people who say it creates incentives to keep people jailed for longer periods, often far from their home communities.

County officials say those federal dollars are a lifeline.

Urrutia said the sheriff’s office tries to keep about 250 to 300 federal inmates in the jail at any given time, since each of those inmates comes with a check. The goal is always to keep the jail beds full, he said. On Wednesday, federal inmates occupied 106 beds and state detainees arrested through Operation Lone Star occupied 322 beds in the jail, which can hold nearly 3,000 inmates, he said.

“It really complicates things,” Urrutia said. “We then have to reduce our federal inmates and send them elsewhere to make room for state inmates.”

The district attorney’s office is also in talks with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about transferring OLS inmates from the El Paso County Jail to the Rogelio Sanchez State Jail in El Paso. County commissioners this week also authorized the county to apply for funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission to pay for legal assistance for state detainees.

County officials said they tried to obtain state funds without issuing the disaster declaration, but when they sent a letter to Abbott’s office detailing the costs the county had incurred because of Operation Lone Star and asking for reimbursement, they received no response.

That left county officials with the difficult decision of either forgoing state funds amid a budget shortfall or issuing a disaster declaration against many community members’ wishes.

“There’s no crisis, there’s no emergency, there’s no disaster” on the border, said Stout, the county commissioner. “It’s more of political rhetoric than anything else.”

Yet he and the rest of the commissioners ultimately decided to issue the disaster declaration. Community advocates have warned that seeking state funds could lead to an influx of National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers who would stoke fear and unrest.

Melissa Lopez, the executive director of Estrella del Paso, a nonprofit that offers free immigration legal services, warned that accepting money from the state would entangle the county in Operation Lone Star.

“El Paso County will become another tool in Gov. Abbott’s tool chest to arrest and detain people who are fleeing their countries with no regard for the reasons why they left,” she said at a June county commissioners court meeting. “El Paso County is not Operation Lone Star.”

Samaniego said he has been loath to involve the county in the state border mission, which, he says, has brought more chaos than help to his constituents. He pointed to some DPS pursuits of vehicles suspected of smuggling migrants that have led to fatal accidents. Such accidents have killed at least 74 people in Texas since Operation Lone Star started, according to a November 2023 Human Rights Watch report.

“We know how to take care of crime here,” Samaniego said. “We don’t need more agents here.”

According to Samaniego, issuing a disaster declaration does not mean the county will see a surge of DPS officers. Others are not so sure.

Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, said that after the city of El Paso issued a disaster declaration in 2022 after an increase in migrant crossings, more DPS officers arrived in town and the state began deploying razor wire on the banks of the Rio Grande. The DPS media office did not respond to multiple emails with questions about their presence in El Paso. “We have seen this kind of cause and effect,” Santillán said. “It’s what happened before. We will just have to wait and see what happens.”

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