Texas Figured it Out, So Can We

Last week, I alongside Senator William Sharer (R-Farmington) and a group of concerned community leaders from New Mexico visited Eagle Pass and Del Rio Texas at their US-Mexico border operation points. We were invited by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Facilities Commission, and the Governor’s Office to receive an in-depth briefing on what their state has accomplished in efforts to secure their southern border. It is absolutely incredible what they have been able to achieve in the last four years under “Operation Lone Star”, the initiative launched by Governor Greg Abbott to take border security into their own state’s hands.

Regardless of your political views, we as New Mexicans know, perhaps more than most, that having a wide-open border into our country is an unsustainable path forward. In just the last four years, we have enabled cartels and international crime organizations and their operations to smuggle mind-blowing amounts of drugs and contraband into our country. Perhaps worse, is the disheartening amounts of fellow human beings that are being trafficked oftentimes as slave laborers, but also to be exploited sexually where children are most valuable. Texas has historically been a prime location that these criminal enterprises have targeted for their operations. They have over 1,200 miles (a large portion of which is remote landscape) of a shared border with Mexico and have the infrastructure such as railroads and highways that make interstate commerce more accessible. However, recently, Operation Lone Star has forced the cartels to reconsider and send their operations west, to our neighboring state of New Mexico to conduct their vile business.

It’s simple, a physical boundary and a deterrence/surveillance operation causes serious problems for the cartels to have successful operations. To them, it’s always just been about the money; when their drug, contraband, and human “shipments” are being seized at levels that fail to make money, they move their operations to locations that do make money. Unfortunately for us, that’s right here in our home state of New Mexico. Our own Governor and local FBI special agent said so themselves, we have a wide-open border and the problems arising from that fact are only getting worse.

Lucky for us, Texas is willing to partner alongside New Mexico and share with us the blueprints for how they have turned their dire situation around 180 degrees. Their approach includes constructing the wall with competitive contractors sourced partially by wall segments that are already paid for by the federal government. They also have organized their state’s Department of Public Safety to allocate the necessary funding and personnel to pursue this goal. Combined with the activation of their own National Guard to serve “local deployments” they are able to employ their own citizens to secure and protect their home state. An interesting fact we learned while visiting these soldiers was that a large majority of those service men and women are there voluntarily, they believe in this mission and are proud of the fact that they can protect their families in this ongoing fight against drug cartels.

When returning back to New Mexico, I decided to visit the Border Patrol  at Santa Teresa’s port of entry. We have these wall segments laying on the ground ready to be set into place. They are already paid for; when I asked the agents why they were not being used they explained to me that they do not have the authroity to do so, in fact, the State of New Mexico has such authority. It was also explained to me that we use a mesh wire “barricade” in problematic areas that is cut by the cartels and replaced by our Border Patrol agents almost on a daily basis.

We have options and there are solutions, some of which I plan to introduce in this upcoming Special Session. I will be asking that all legislators sign on to a bill that provides the necessary allocations for our state to implement this plan to secure our border. Texas figured it out, let’s join them in this effort and avoid being used by cartels at even larger rates than we already endure. Governor Abbott, I applaud your leadership with these efforts and hope that our Governor will do the same.