{"id":52403,"date":"2025-11-17T00:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T00:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/52403\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T00:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T00:51:11","slug":"greg-abbott-serves-pre-thanksgiving-meals-to-texas-border-troops-with-border-czar-governors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/52403\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Abbott serves pre-Thanksgiving meals to Texas border troops with border czar, governors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other state and federal GOP officials met in Eagle Pass on Sunday to serve meals to Texas National Guard soldiers<\/a> and state troopers who will be stationed along the Mexico border for Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

Abbott addressed the troops at the Eagle Pass border security base<\/a>\u00a0with U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan, Virgina Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Missouri Gov. Mike\u00a0Kehoe and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen. The group\u00a0applauded the officers – seated at tables with water, soda and fall foliage – for\u00a0the role it said they had played in\u00a0trimming illegal border crossings, halting criminals, steering away drugs and saving lives throughout the U.S.<\/p>\n

“You saved the United States of America,” Abbott said before lunch was served. “At a time when we were being overrun by literally millions of people coming across the border illegally, people have been proven to be very dangerous criminals who have been wrecking mayhem across our country. You were the forefront, you were in the vanguard of making sure that in Texas we put up a fight to defend our country, to defend our state.”<\/p>\n

LAST WEEKEND: Greg Abbott launches campaign for record fourth term as Texas governor, pushing property tax relief<\/a><\/p>\n

The Eagle Pass base\u00a0has been\u00a0a centerpiece\u00a0of Abbott’s multiyear border crackdown<\/a> known as Operation Lone Star<\/a>,\u00a0which he launched during the Biden administration.\u00a0Abbott noted on Sunday, as he has previously, that\u00a0Texas is responsible for the 85% drop in illegal border crossings that the state has seen since the height of the Biden years.\u00a0Experts say that drop was a\u00a0result of other factors<\/a>, including stepped-up enforcement by Mexico last year.<\/p>\n

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, illegal immigration has fueled a nationwide deportation campaign targeting hundreds of thousands of detainees. Homan projects\u00a0more than 600,0000 deportations by the end of the year and expects the numbers to keep growing as the government enlists more ICE agents.<\/p>\n

“If you think the numbers look good this year, wait till next year because you ain’t seen sh–\u00a0yet,” he\u00a0said. “Next year’s going to be amazing.”<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, ICE officials said they made more than 1,500 arrests<\/a> in the Houston area during a 10-day period.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Mayor John Whitmire defends HPD as criticism mounts over ICE cooperation: \u2018Don’t politicize this’<\/a><\/p>\n

Homan flexed Trump’s immigration policy at the lunch and praised Abbott’s help in deploying the National Guard to defend ICE personnel in different parts of the country. The troops that Texas sent to Chicago last month were blocked by a judge from actively policing the streets and were expected on Sunday\u00a0to begin returning home shortly<\/a>, according to a U.S. defense official.<\/p>\n

The meals for the troops stationed at the border are a yearly tradition for Abbott, who served food\u00a0with Homan last year<\/a> and with Trump in 2023<\/a>. In addition to the state governors, this year’s lunch also drew Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Freeman Martin, Major Gen. Thomas Suelzer – the most senior National Guard officer in Texas – and National Border Patrol Council President Paul Perez.<\/p>\n

They credited the troops for blocking the flow of undocumented immigrants and manning what they called the most secure border in U.S. history. Martin said Operation Lone Star has been “nothing but a success” that has\u00a0halted roughly 811 million lethal doses of\u00a0fentanyl\u00a0and 80 tons of methamphetamine, and has led to 59,000 criminal arrests and 48,000 felony arrests.<\/p>\n

He said the troops were responsible for a steep drop in illegal immigration.<\/p>\n

“That’s a credit to all the National Guard soldiers in here today that did all the blocking, denying and deterring, and shifted that west to Arizona and California,” he said.<\/p>\n

The governors joined in on the praise, thanking the troops for sacrificing time with their families during the holiday season to help secure the border and the states beyond it.<\/p>\n

“Behind all of you is a family, and your family right now is absent you,”\u00a0Youngkin said. “And therefore I also want to thank them. There’s a moment of a question that is asked – whom shall I send? And each and every one of you put your hand up and said ‘send me.’ And I want to thank you for answering the call because the work that is being done today is the most critical work in this whole country, which is to secure our nation.”<\/p>\n

This article originally published at Greg Abbott serves pre-Thanksgiving meals to Texas border troops with border czar, governors<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other state and federal GOP officials met in Eagle Pass on Sunday to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5125,29203,392,29201,14987,2930,6355,3311,27,29,28,29202],"class_list":{"0":"post-52403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-eagle-pass","9":"tag-glenn-youngkin","10":"tag-greg-abbott","11":"tag-illegal-border-crossings","12":"tag-mexico-border","13":"tag-national-guard","14":"tag-operation-lone-star","15":"tag-president-donald-trump","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-texas-headlines","18":"tag-texas-news","19":"tag-tom-homan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52403","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=52403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}