The Daily - Inside Operation Lone Star

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

In the post-Trump era, some red states have moved aggressively to rebuke the Biden administration at the local level and signal to voters what a Republican-led country might look like.In Texas, immigration is a key battleground. Today, we speak to Hunter Schuler, a member of the National Guards, about why Gov. Greg Abbott has sent him and thousands of other security officers to the U.S.-Mexico border.Guest: Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a Times Opinion podcast host; and J. David Goodman, the Houston bureau chief for The New York Times. Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Operation Lone Star is an expensive and unusual effort to reinforce border security. But after a year, there is little to show for it.Soldiers sent to patrol the border have complained of difficulties and a seemingly rudderless mission.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

All right, so starting a 265 mile drive from Kyle, Texas to Zapata, Texas. GPS says it's going to take about four hours and 17 minutes. Here we go sometimes I'll just zone out zone back in and realize 45 minutes have gone by passed through three towns don't remember any of it little under two hours to go now

not a whole lot of trees once you get this far south A little under two hours to go now. Not a whole lot of trees once you get this far south. Just a lot of mesquite brush, shrubbery, and dirt. Plenty of dirt. And police, too. State troopers line the highways heading to the border just after 6 p.m. now pulling into the gate they've got Heskos at the gate it's big green things you fill with sand. Appreciate it. Thank you. They make it look like a forward operating base in a war zone.

With the HESCOs and the barbed wire. Spotlights. I gotta get ready for work. So yeah, I guess I'll sign off now. I gotta get ready for work. So yeah, I guess I'll sign off now. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bilbaro. This is The Daily. In the post-Trump era, states like Texas are helping to define the future of the party and moving aggressively at the local level to enact policies that are both a rebuke to the Biden administration and a signal to voters of what a Republican-led country might look like.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has drawn the most attention for his policies on trans youth, but he's also been targeting his state's border with Mexico, deploying thousands of state police and National Guard in a move that his opponents say is purely a stunt, given that only the federal government has the power to enforce immigration law. Today, my colleague Lulo Garcia Navarro spoke to one National Guardsman, Hunter Shuler, who found himself leaving his day job on a moment's notice to be part of Operation Lone Star. It's Thursday, May 19th.

So Hunter, how did you find out about your current deployment, Operation Lone Star? Where were you and what happened? Well, November, I show up to drill, thinking that it's any other regular drill. And on Saturday, they tell myself and about seven other medics, we've gotten a frago from brigade. There's a tasking to send eight medics down to the border, and you all have been selected. Pack your stuff. You need to report to the in-processing facility on Monday.

That was no notice whatsoever. I thought I was going home Sunday night. I thought I was going to go back to work in Austin on Monday. What were you told the purpose of the mission was and what you were supposed to be doing? Well, so I was told by just the very next level of leadership above me who was just a sergeant. The further towards the bottom you go, the less that those leaders know. For this guy, I mean, he was given an order to name eight medics, just named eight medics, and that was that. So, I didn't really get like a explanation or a briefing or anything like that. You know, in movies, you see the leader, you know, give some sort of inspiring speech to his foot soldiers.

This was not Braveheart. This was, you're just a line on a spreadsheet today. So grab your stuff and go. But I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why we needed to be activated so quickly, why we needed to be spun up in a matter of days. I have searched for an explanation to that question or an answer to that question, and I haven't been able to find one. So you're sent to the border. Where on the border were you sent? Where on the border were you sent?

Well, when they gave us the location on the map at Camp Swift, I immediately knew something was up because the pin that they gave us, I said, wait a second, are you sure this is right? This might be a mistake. And they said, no, that's right. And it's because it was literally just a spot on the side of the highway, just outside of Del Rio, just in a field. And I remember one of the soldiers we were with, she started crying because that was sort of the moment that it became like real, like, hey, you are actually getting sent. You're going to the border, whether you like it or not at this point. Can you describe what it was like there, that little spot on the map? We had heard rumors that soldiers were staying in

trailers down there. And once we finally got there, that's exactly what we saw. Rows and rows of 18-wheeler trailers. Inside of them had been installed bunk beds on both sides, stacked three high. So 36 beds in the back of an 18-wheeler trailer with an air conditioning unit on the front. Basically, it could have been a produce trailer or something. And in some ways, we joked, you know, this is how migrants are smuggled in from Mexico. I mean, sometimes that's what they do. They pack a ton of people into the back of an 18-wheeler trailer and try and get them across the border. I mean, everywhere you looked around, things looked temporary. You know, tent structures and trailers and port-a-johns and generators.

There was no water main access. There's no electricity from the grid. There's no plumbing, no sewage, even the lights. There are those lights you see at construction sites that are a generator on a trailer with the spotlights on top. I mean, if you really want to have this sort of long-term activation, why would you have so many temporary solutions? And in fact, I think the main contractor that TMD hired to set these up, on the sides of their trailers, it says like hurricanes, wildfires, natural disasters or whatever. That's what these were meant for. It was sort of a temporary response to a large displacement of people. Let me just say as someone who has covered immigration and been at that border, I mean, the border already has a lot of other law enforcement and military there.

It is a heavily militarized border. Did you know when you went down there how you were supposed to fit in to what was already there? No, no, we had no clue. You know, there was several days where we just sort of sat around waiting to figure out what we were going to do. What is our day-to-day life going to look like? What are our responsibilities? But then... State officials are preparing for another potential migrant surge along the southwest border. It wasn't until a few weeks later they had what was called Operation Steel Curtain.

A few weeks later, they had what was called Operation Steel Curtain. Hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers creating a barrier here along the border in Eagle Pass. And that was the big dog and pony show. Empty shipping containers and barbed wire being used to create barriers right up against the river. Shipping containers lined up on the edge of the river next to the international bridge. Officials say it's a show of force. These troops ready to respond and stop any mass crossings. You know, hundreds of state police lined up

along the border next to Humvees, and helicopters flew in with a company of military police to do riot control exercises. Two, squad, shoot! It is indeed a company of military police to do riot control exercises. It is indeed a show of force. They can do crowd control. They can do riot formations. They can create holding areas. There were local news crews, but the Texas military department brought their own media crew and they had guys out there with GoPros and drones, you know, getting up in our faces. You know, they could have been making a recruiting commercial. I mean, that's sort of what it looked like.

This is a very visible demonstration of the capability that we bring. And, you know, eventually we wound up getting assigned to, you know, patrol the observation points along the river and the roads. But to have that training exercise first really sort of set the tone for the political nature of this whole mission. I want to understand what those early days were like. Can you describe for me a typical day down there after the training exercise when you started doing your normal duties when they had you on patrol? The medics really had two responsibilities. We were to maintain the aid stations. Del Rio has two base camps and an aid station at each one. So we were responsible for providing routine care and treatment to the soldiers who lived at those base camps. And we also had a roving patrol responsibility where we would take one of the rental trucks and drive out to all of the observation points and check on the soldiers who were out there to see how they were doing, see if they need just water or Tylenol.

you know, how they were doing, see if they need, you know, just water or Tylenol or, but yeah, we joked, we're kind of just like a medical ice cream truck driving along to each of these points offering different sorts of medical candies to the soldiers. And these soldiers that are at these observation points, they're looking for illegal crossings, I take it. That was their primary purpose? illegal crossings, I take it, that was their primary purpose? I think that was probably their only purpose. I mean, depends on who you ask. In some areas, the number of crossings was very high, but in many areas, there was little to no activity at all. And so, especially for those soldiers, you could go weeks without seeing an immigrant.

And we'd drive up and we'd say, hey, you guys need anything? And more than one time somebody would joke, oh, yeah, morale? You guys got any morale? I can't seem to find any morale. Morale jokes were common, you know, and some soldiers still weren't being paid. They had gone weeks without getting paid or they were being paid the incorrect amount or whatever else. You know, and it's every little thing, right? You know, when you have this monotonous mission and you go and you sit in a Humvee all day and bake in the sun and just stare off into the distance or, you know, there's only so much you can read on Twitter or Instagram or whatever, and they're all just dejected. And, you know, and I see comments on Twitter and social media that say, you know, well, why are these soldiers complaining? They signed

up for this. They signed on the dotted line and they knew what they were getting into. And my response to that is like, no, actually, that's not true. This had literally never happened before. At this point in time, I had been in the military for a decade. I'd been in the National Guard for a decade. So, I could speak with a decade of Guard experience and say that no, you know, when somebody signs that enlistment and raises their right hand and says the oath, no reasonable person could have foreseen this outcome. This quite literally is not what we signed up for. The National Guard is a sort of Swiss army knife. And sure, can we sit at the border and observe and report and capture the immigrants that pass us? Yes, we're capable of doing that. But as an organization, Yes, we're capable of doing that. But as an organization, are we going to be the silver bullet that solves the border crisis? No, that's not us. It's going to take a lot more resources and money and diplomacy and, you know, it will take a much bigger effort with more tools than the National Guard can provide. And did you all feel that there was someone to blame for your presence on the border? Yeah, obviously. The commander-in-chief of the Texas military forces.

It certainly was the governor's doing. And I think everybody knows that. Not everybody is willing to vilify the governor. Many soldiers are conservatives. Many of them voted for him. I voted for him. But yeah, I mean, the chain of command is clear. And none of us will ever know for certain, but the timing of it coincides pretty conveniently with a segment that Tucker Carlson did, where Tucker Carlson specifically called out Governor Abbott by name and said that he was not doing enough to secure the catalyst. After the break,

my colleague, Houston Bureau Chief David Goodman, on the story behind Operation Lone Star. We'll be right back. David, we just heard from a member of the Texas National Guard who described being deployed for months along with thousands of others to the U.S.-Mexico border to not really do a whole lot. And he says that he believes the impetus for this operation is that the state's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, was worried about attacks from fellow conservatives like Tucker Carlson. Is that accurate based on your reporting? How do you understand the origins of this operation? Well, there's a lot of truth to that analysis, but there's also a much broader context to how we got there. And this really begins with the election of Joe Biden. And that election signals both to migrants who might be thinking of coming to the United States and to

the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, that the U.S. government might be more lenient with migrants who arrive at the border. And so the Biden administration's open border policies have created an open season for human traffickers. You see the Texas governor start to prepare the state for the possible arrival of many migrants and start to amp up his rhetoric around the border. These criminals are preying upon women and children, exposing them to abuse and to terror. And pretty soon after Biden's inaugurated in March of 2021. Texas is stepping up to secure the border and to keep our communities safe.

Governor Greg Abbott announces a plan to secure the border on his own, and he calls this Operation Lone Star. Operation Lone Star. Right. And how is Operation Lone Star envisioned at first? Well, it actually, it doesn't begin with a massive deployment of the National Guard at the border. He directs the state police to actually start arresting migrants who have crossed into the United States illegally. And this is a novel way of using state police, not least because the federal government is in charge of immigration enforcement. Right. So really the loophole that Abbott comes up with is that these state police can arrest migrants for trespassing.

But those arrests can only really be made on private land. And most of Texas is private land. And especially in this border area, you have these gigantic ranches of 10,000 acres, 100,000 acres. And so the state police start entering into deals with private ranch owners to get onto the land and to arrest these migrants. But this is actually just a misdemeanor charge. This is not a serious offense, you know. And so pretty quickly,

they have hundreds of migrants and eventually thousands of migrants who start to clog up the jails and the court system in these small rural counties that are, you know, typically used to processing maybe 50 cases, you know, in a month, and now they're having to do hundreds of cases, 500 cases in a typical month because of this plan. And what's happening to the arrested migrants who have been charged with local charges rather than violating federal immigration rules, so are they being sent back across the border? What's happening? Well, no, I mean, that's the interesting thing is that the state of Texas is not able to send these migrants back over the border. That's not within their power. I mean, they are actually

turned over in many cases or in most cases to immigration officials, and some of them are deported for various reasons, but many of them are able to pursue asylum claims that they ordinarily would have brought. But, you know, Abbott can and does make the claim that he's making all these arrests and this is having an effect on the border and showing that Texas is serious about enforcing the law. And he contrasts what he's doing with the Democrats' policy, which he calls catch and release. He says his policy is to arrest and jail migrants. But it's really hard for him to claim success here because we still see record numbers of people, migrants, crossing the border illegally. And so what starts to happen is that the governor comes under increasing pressure

from the right to actually ramp up this program and to do more to actually, what they would say, actually secure the border. And you hear this rhetoric from many parts of the right in Texas and beyond, including... Well, you probably have the sense that things are out of control on our southern border and have been since Joe Biden was sworn in as president. And you're absolutely right, it's worse than you imagined. On Tucker Carlson's program. The Biden administration has made it clear it's not going to do anything about this, of course.

The governor of Texas isn't doing much about it either. That would be Greg Abbott, a Republican. You have all the attention focused on what is Governor Greg Abbott doing there and is he doing enough? In a matter of moments, Greg Abbott could deploy the National Guard, the Texas National Guard, to shut off the southern border completely, protect his state and the rest of the country. He should refuse to do that. And one of the things that Tucker Carlson is really hammering Abbott on is deploying the National Guard at the border. Why not save the country if you have the power to do that? Why not save your own state? And he's continually on his program saying the governor needs to do more on this. And we've asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott many times to come on this show to explain

why he hasn't called the National Guard to seal the Texas border and protect the rest of us from this invasion. And he invites the governor on, the governor doesn't go on the show, and so then... So pretty soon, possibly tomorrow, we plan to invite his primary opponents on the show to describe what they would do if they ran Texas. Tucker Carlson starts to invite Republicans on who are challenging Governor Abbott in a primary election. And one of the simple things you can do immediately, you can deploy six to seven thousand in those

critical areas. And these conservatives who he's bringing on would push for even more hardline policies at the border than the governor is pursuing. I'm going to engage all the Texas military, our National Guard, 20,000 or more, and we're going to secure the whole river. And you arrest them for aiding and abetting a terrorist organization. So those are some of the initial things that I would do. All of them are so sensible, my jaw is open. I'm wondering why they haven't been done. And so it's amid this pressure that the governor decides to deploy thousands of National Guard troops down to the border. And in order to do this, he needs to compel the soldiers to go.

They need to be sent involuntarily. And what makes this deployment unusual and places a strain, really, on the soldiers who are part of it is that it's not a typical National Guard deployment. What you normally have, and what's very common, actually, in Texas, is one of two things. You have either the National Guard deployed on very short notice for a relatively short time to address a natural disaster. Like a hurricane. Exactly. Or there's the federal deployments overseas for wars. And those are planned very far in advance with a lot of warning. And they often last a long time. But the folks that are involved have a lot of time to get their affairs in order, to sort out their jobs.

And this was really a combination of the two of those. This was a short-notice, long-term deployment here in Texas that put real strain on the troops and on the Guard itself. And David, you've explained how Governor Abbott was able to make use of state police in this operation, despite their limited powers. They're making these trespassing arrests. What about the National Guard? What's his idea behind the role that they are supposed to play in Operation Lone Star? Well, so their role is actually fairly ill-defined and actually very limited. And I was able to see this firsthand on a few occasions. And most recently, I went to a town,

a border town called Eagle Pass, which is a small community right along the Rio Grande that really has been transformed by this program. As an example, there's a municipal golf course right under the International Bridge that goes right along the Rio Grande. It's a kind of jewel of the city for, you know, the mayor and others. And now it has concertina wire all along the edge and a Humvee sitting there by one of the holes. And so, you know, on a typical day, there'll be people playing golf and there'll be the National Guard with binoculars looking over the river. Where'd your partner go? Oh, he's over there.

All right. And it just so happened, when I was there recently, those National Guard members by the golf course spotted a guy coming across the river. Was it an old guy? Yeah. Or at least they thought they did, and they said he was going on one crutch,

went into the river, and seemed to make it across. Do you think he came over this way? It looks so fast. I don't know. I don't know how you could make it with crutches. Yeah. He had one of them.

So what do they do? Well, there's not a lot they can do. They don't actually have the power to make arrests. Sorry. Yeah, you know. And what they do when they see migrants in an ordinary situation is they call the Border patrol and have them come pick them up. And so in this case, you know, they did get out of the Humvee and try and locate the man they'd seen crossing.

They rush into the very high reeds that are there along the Rio Grande. Do you think he's hiding out in there? No, sir. And, you know, had they found him, they would have called Border Patrol, but they ultimately,

they didn't find him. I went up the road and went up the road, man. So, the role of the National Guard deployed in the thousands along the border in a place like Eagle Pass

is basically if they see something to call federal border patrol agents. Basically, they're just a set of eyes. That's right. I mean, and that's what's led to a lot of frustration among some of the members of the National Guard who are deployed down there, who feel like their lives have been upended for this mission. And, you know, at least one of them told me he feels like a mall cop down there, that this is not what he's trained for

and that this is not an effective use of the Guard. And a lot of these guys do support the mission of trying to have more security on the border. But this is for them, who are watching it firsthand, not

the way they think it should be done. So this starts to explain why the National Guardman we heard from earlier in this episode, Hunter, claims that this deployment has been so demoralizing for everyone involved. From what you found, David, just how big a morale problem has there been with this deployment? morale. And they found that it was quite low. You had some folks who, you know, out of boredom or whatever else, getting into bar fights, having drunk driving incidents associated with the deployment. And then you get into some more serious episodes of actual suicides among the ranks during this deployment. You had four members who had committed suicide at some point last fall and winter. And so it really, the alarm bells were

going off within the National Guard in Texas. And, you know, things have started to improve on the mission. You have actual bases being built out along the border that kind of resemble the bases that you'd see during an overseas deployment. And you have some of the pay issues being resolved. But what hasn't been resolved is really the work of the mission itself. And that's still a source of frustration among those who are deployed. And has this deployment in any measurable way changed the border crossing situation, the central point of Operation Lone Star? I think the short answer is no. I mean, if you look at the number of apprehensions, which is used as a barometer of how many people are crossing illegally, that's continuing to go up. And so the reality on the ground right now is that this program is not discouraging people

from trying to cross. And David, how much is all of this costing? It's very expensive. It's, how much is all of this costing? It's very expensive. It's very expensive for the state of Texas. And this operation was already far and away more money than the state had spent on border security in recent years. They had budgeted about $3 billion.

Whereas in a typical year, they would spend about $800 million. So it's more than tripling the budget. And they're already running out of money. And so there's questions that are being asked now in Texas about how long can this be sustained and how much can really the state afford to spend on this? So to that point, given the futility of this operation so far, the growing cost of it, and the really big morale problem that has emerged among the people carrying it out, what do the residents of Texas think of this operation, especially this massive deployment of the National Guard? Well, it's pretty interesting. They support it, largely. I mean, Abbott gets points, I think, and you hear from, you know, Democrats and Republicans for doing something. Now, obviously, there are people who disagree with what he's doing, but there are people who disagree with the deployment, and then there are people that want him to go even further.

And so some of those who would say that they oppose what Governor Abbott is doing here do so because they'd like him to do more. And they think he's not doing enough to secure the border. It's interesting because we recently talked to you, David, about this other action that Governor Abbott has been taking that's drawn even more national attention than this operation has. And that is his effort to block gender-affirming care for trans youth. We did a whole episode about this. And similarly there, you told us how Abbott seemed to be directly responding to pressure from within the Republican Party. And on the one hand, taken as a whole, it really begs the question of whether Abbott is just doing whatever seems politically advantageous on both

of these fronts, trans rights, as well as deploying National Guard people on the border. On the other hand, I hear you saying that Texans are responding well to this, at least in the case of the border, because the governor is doing something. So what seems, in your analysis, to be really motivating this guy? Well, I think it's a real question. And I've had some conversations with pretty established conservatives in Texas that see the governor as at least leaving open

the possibility of a presidential run here. And one thing that indicates that to folks who are watching is the fact that the governor has survived his primary. He defeated those hardline conservatives who were criticizing him on Tucker Carlson. And now he faces a pretty significant challenge, his first really from a well-known Democrat in Beto O'Rourke in the general election. But he hasn't moved to the center, which you might expect in a race like that. In fact, he's gone moved to the center which you might expect in a race like that in fact he's gone further to the right

both on these issues of sexuality and gender and on the border and he's continued to do things in some cases that mimic what his hardline conservative challengers in the primary were calling on him to do even after the primary's over and so it really does suggest that he's not willing to do anything at this point

to break from that part of the Republican Party that may be a primary base in an eventual presidential run. And from a Republican political perspective, what's more presidential than taking a federal responsibility, one that's really up to the president, and saying, I'm going to do that myself? Well, David, thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. Hunter is still at the border. In response to the deployment,

he organized a successful unionization drive within the Texas National Guard, a very rare move within the military. His conversation with Lulu Garcia Navarro was excerpted from a new show from NYT Opinion, First Person, coming in June. Lulu will be speaking with people whose lives intersect with the news about the stories behind their beliefs. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Right now, as shown on this map,

over 32% of Americans live in an area with a medium or high COVID-19 community level. On Wednesday, federal health officials warned that a third of Americans live in areas where the threat of COVID-19 is now so high that they should consider wearing a mask in indoor public settings and testing with greater frequency. Nationwide, new daily infections are surging,

up 61% over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations are up 27% over the past two weeks. But it's unclear whether the new warning will change behaviors in high-risk areas. One of them is New York City, whose mayor, Eric Adams, said on Wednesday that he does not plan to bring back a mask mandate, despite soaring infections. The very variant that comes, we move into shutdown thoughts, we move into panicking, we're not going to function as a city. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Olivia Nat, and Eric Krupke, with help from Rachel Quester. It was edited by Lisa Tobin, Lisa Chow, and Stephanie Joyce,

contains original music by Marian Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landefur of Wonderland. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.