Trump’s border czar pick supports using Texas ranch for mass deportations

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The Texas General Land Office is offering President-elect Donald Trump a 1,400-acre Starr County ranch as a site to build detention centers for his promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a letter the office sent him Tuesday.

Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in the Tuesday letter that her office is “fully prepared” to enter an agreement with any federal agencies involved in deporting individuals from the country “to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.”

The state recently bought the land along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley and announced plans to build a border wall on it. The previous owner had not let the state construct a wall there and had “actively blocked law enforcement from accessing the property,” according to the letter the GLO sent Trump.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment. Trump's pick to become "border czar," Tom Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Hill this week that the administration will "absolutely" use the land Texas has offered but did not offer any more details.

A cornerstone of Trump’s campaign was his pledge to clamp down on immigration by returning policies from his first term and deporting undocumented people en masse on a scale the country has not experienced in decades. Former aides — including some who are set to rejoin him — have described incorporating staging areas near the border to detain and deport people.

In an interview with Fox News posted Tuesday, Buckingham said she was “100% on board with the Trump administration's pledge to get these criminals out of our country.”

Buckingham had previously said she approved an easement within 24 hours of acquiring the Starr County land to let the Texas Facilities Commission, which is overseeing the state’s border wall construction, to begin building a wall. In the Fox interview, she said that move was followed by “brainstorming” with her team.

“We figured, hey, the Trump administration probably needs some deportation facilities because we've got a lot of these violent criminals that we need to round up and get the heck out of our country,” Buckingham said. She noted the land is mostly flat, “easy to build on,” accessible to international airports and near the Rio Grande.

“We're happy to make this offer and hope they take us up on it,” she added.

The GLO plans to kick off construction of the border wall on the property next week.

Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations is certain to encounter logistical and legal challenges, like the ones that stifled promises from his first campaign once he assumed office.

However, Trump’s Cabinet picks indicate he is moving ahead in trying to carry out the deportations. He has selected Stephen Miller, an architect of the previous Trump administration’s border and immigration policy, to return as a top aide as well as Homan, the immigration hardliner who has defended the separation of migrant families during Trump's first term.

And Texas is poised to try to help him implement the policies. After Trump left office in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott launched an unprecedented border enforcement operation that included building a military base in Eagle Pass and the deployment of thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and state National Guard troops to the border. As part of the mission, the state also placed a floating barrier of buoys in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass to deter migrants from crossing the river into Texas. The barrier was extended on Wednesday, Abbott said.

CNN reported Saturday that Texas’ “border czar” — Michael Banks, who serves as a special adviser to Abbott — has been a part of behind-the-scenes discussions with Trump’s team about immigration initiatives.

Disclosure: The Texas General Land Office has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.