{"id":466652,"date":"2026-10-15T10:05:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T10:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/466652\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T10:05:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T10:05:24","slug":"greg-abbott-keeps-renewing-border-emergency-despite-drop-in-crossings-propublica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/466652\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Abbott Keeps Renewing Border Emergency Despite Drop in Crossings \u2014 ProPublica"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> repeated a claim he\u2019s made for the past five years. He stated that the number of people crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally \u201cposed an ongoing and imminent threat\u201d across the state. In doing so, he renewed a border security disaster proclamation that has greatly expanded his powers without going through the state Legislature.<\/p>\n

Abbott\u2019s declaration stands in sharp contrast to the numbers reported by the Trump administration, which says the drop in the flow of migrants crossing the border has been unprecedented and has reached historic lows<\/a> since it took over in January 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, since Abbott first declared an emergency at the border during the Biden administration in 2021, he\u2019s renewed or amended the proclamation<\/a> at least 69 times \u2014 21 of those during Trump\u2019s tenure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Republican governor, who is running for his fourth term next month, has consolidated power like no Texas governor<\/a> before him, building on his predecessors\u2019 efforts to strengthen what by design is supposed to be a \u201cweak governor\u201d state as the constitution limits what can be done without legislative approval, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have reported. One of the methods he\u2019s used to do that is issuing executive orders and disaster declarations that allow him to shift funds, suspend regulations and award no-bid contracts at times of emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since January 2025, two of the top agencies involved with border enforcement \u2014 the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department \u2014 have awarded more than $5 million in noncompetitive contracts citing the emergency for items like a Ford F-150, rifles and apartments, state records show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s unprecedented,\u201d said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. \u201cI don\u2019t think that there is a similar example, certainly not as to the length of the emergency, and certainly not after the emergency has seemed to pass.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abbott\u2019s office did not respond to specific questions for this story, including about the noncompetitive contracts, but Deputy Press Secretary Madeline Waschak said in a written statement that the governor has been clear that border security is an ongoing priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe damage caused by four years of failed border policies under Democrat rule did not disappear overnight, and the progress we have made will not sustain itself without continued vigilance,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecuring the border requires constant, deliberate action to combat illegal crossings, cartel smuggling, fentanyl trafficking, and other criminal activity that threatens public safety in Texas. Governor Abbott will ensure the tools remain in place to safeguard our state as we work alongside the Trump Administration to deter, arrest, detain, and deport illegal immigrants,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

At the time of Abbott\u2019s first border declaration, four months into President Joe Biden\u2019s term, Border Patrol was making more than 180,000 apprehensions<\/a> along the southwest border in a single month. According to Abbott, the federal government\u2019s inability or unwillingness to enforce immigration laws had created a humanitarian crisis in many communities in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden Administration\u2019s open-border policies have enabled escalating violence from the cartels, dramatically increased the risk of human trafficking, and created a severe crisis of illegal drugs crossing into the United States,\u201d the order stated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then, apprehensions along the southwest border have dropped on average to about 8,000 a month this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The border security declaration remains Abbott\u2019s longest continuously running emergency proclamation. Abbott similarly renewed his 2020 COVID-19 disaster declaration for three years, even as he downplayed the severity of the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the quiet power of the governor,\u201d said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. \u201cIt\u2019s not something often that they brag about because the more that it becomes a political issue, the more that there might be some contestation of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other than border security, the governor\u2019s second longest-running emergency declaration is related to droughts. He declared a state disaster in July 2022 and within days amended it bringing the total of counties to 189. He\u2019s continued to renew it, but now it applies to about a third of the counties originally identified.<\/p>\n

State lawmakers have repeatedly tried \u2014 and failed \u2014 to curb the governor\u2019s powers under the state\u2019s disaster act. Last year, legislators from both parties filed at least a handful of measures that would mandate Abbott get approval from the Legislature if he wanted to extend a disaster declaration, but none passed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abbott\u2019s emergency declarations have been accompanied by record spending on border security efforts. Texas budgeted over $11 billion during the Biden administration and allotted an additional $3 billion last year, after Trump took office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all part of Abbott\u2019s Operation Lone Star, an initiative he launched in March 2021 contending it was needed to stem the smuggling of drugs and people into the country through Texas. Because of the emergency declaration, police could charge immigrants with criminal trespassing for crossing the border through private property, and the governor was able to shift money from other agencies to fund the operation and build border barriers, deploy the National Guard and get help from other states.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of the funding for Operation Lone Star is funneled through the Texas Military Department and DPS, two of the agencies responsible for major enforcement efforts. But the governor\u2019s share of border spending has also ballooned since Abbott took office over a decade ago. State lawmakers allotted his office nearly $230 million last year to distribute through grants, largely to local prosecutors and government agencies helping the state with Operation Lone Star.<\/p>\n

Though the situation on the ground has changed, one aspect of the emergency declaration has remained constant: the ability of state agencies to award noncompetitive contracts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DPS and the Texas Military Department have awarded at least six noncompetitive contracts so far during the second Trump administration for work related to the operation where they cite an emergency. This includes a more than $2 million contract to Texas-based CTC Gunworks LLC for rifles and pistols for active-duty personnel. CTC Gunworks officials could not be reached for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Officials with the Texas Military Department referred questions about its procurement process to the governor\u2019s office. A DPS spokesperson said in a written statement that even though the disaster declaration allows for expedited purchases, the department still follows best practices and \u201caims to select vendors offering the best value, determined by cost, quality, and ability to meet the specific disaster response requirements.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regarding the specific contracts, the DPS spokesperson said they were purchases tied to existing state contracts.<\/p>\n

The continued funding and expansion of Operation Lone Star has come even as it\u2019s been plagued with problems. In 2022, an investigation by ProPublica, the Tribune and The Marshall Project<\/a> found that the state\u2019s reported success included arrests unrelated to the border or immigration and counted drug seizures made by troopers from across the state who were not directly assigned to the operation. The Tribune<\/a> and Army Times<\/a> also exposed poor working conditions, pay delays and suicides among National Guard members deployed as part of Operation Lone Star.<\/p>\n

During a Tribune-hosted event this week with state lawmakers from El Paso, Democratic state Rep. Mary Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>, vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, said state legislators have already started to scale back when it comes to border funding and there\u2019s interest from both sides of the aisle to continue to do so in the upcoming legislative session.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the problem is that some of that border security money still lies in the governor\u2019s office which has no checks and balances and because we are still under an emergency \u2014 which is not an emergency anymore \u2014 an emergency border security statement which he can just use that money, you have seen some questionable appropriations under the veil of border security,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Abbott, however, has repeatedly said that Texas\u2019 work in securing the border is not over.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must secure the border not just for the next two years of the Trump administration, but we gotta do it forever,\u201d Abbott said at a press conference in early October<\/a> where he discussed the federal government\u2019s $7.5 billion reimbursement for border security expenses the state had incurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rottinghaus said that Texas will always have to confront border crossings and drug trafficking, but the existence of those problems don\u2019t always justify an emergency declaration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven someone who strongly supports the governor\u2019s board of policies might ask whether they want a future governor of the opposite party using the same interpretation of emergency authority for years,\u201d Rottinghaus said, adding that the issue is that \u201cgovernors, once they get a power, are hesitant to give it back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott repeated a claim he\u2019s made for the past five years. He stated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-466652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}