Dr. Dawn Buckingham, chairwoman of the Veterans Land Board speaks at a groundbreaking ceremony for an expansion of the Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery.
USA TODAY | Published November 24, 2024
EL PASO, Texas – After years of Texas being the first stop for people illegally crossing the border, Lone Star State officials are volunteering to let President-elect Donald Trump use a state ranch as the last place immigrants set foot on American soil before being forcibly deported.On Tuesday, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered Trump a 1,400-acre ranch near the border in South Texas to host a mass deportation facility. Buckingham bought the ranch earlier this year, she said, because the previous owner refused to let Texas build a border wall across it.
“I am committed to using every available means at my disposal to gain complete operational security of our border,” Buckingham wrote to Trump, saying the land was available to process, detain and deport “violent criminals.”
Trump campaigned on a promise that he will launch the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. In a statement, his transition office said the Trump-Vance administration remains committed to swift action.
While Trump has repeatedly said he plans to target violent criminal offenders, he has also said the deportations could target as many as 20 million people ‒ far more than the number with criminal records.
The previous largest mass deportation, in the 1950s, removed more than 1 million people, mostly Mexicans but also U.S. citizens, in a roundup from California to Chicago. Some experts say it’s likely the new deportation effort would target not just violent criminal offenders, but also people who have lived in the U.S. for years but lack the proper paperwork.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.usatoday.com
RELATED: Texas land commissioner open to offering Trump more land for mass deportation
The official said the land could be used to build “deportation facilities.”
Texas land commissioner offers 1,402 acres to Trump for ‘deportation facilities’Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham is offering the incoming Trump administration 1,402 acres it purchased along the Texas-Mexico border.John Moore/Getty Images
ABC NEWS | Published November 22, 2024
A Texas official, who this week offered the incoming Trump administration a 1,402-acre plot of land to build “deportation facilities,” says other parts of Texas near the border could be offered up in a similar fashion.
“Absolutely — I have 13 million acres, if any of them can be of help in this process, we’re happy to have that discussion,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham told ABC’s Mireya Villarreal in an interview.
The Texas General Land Office purchased the plot of land from a farmer in October originally to facilitate Texas’ efforts to build a border wall. Together with this land, the state office owns about 4,000 acres in Starr County, about 35 miles from McAllen, Texas.
“My office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the United States Border Patrol 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,” Buckingham wrote in a letter addressed to President-elect DonaldTrump, earlier this week.
“There was a significant mass of humanity and terrible things happening on this property. We heard it again and again and again,” she said.
Buckingham placed the blame squarely on what she called the Biden administration’s “open border policies” and said the county voted Republican for the first time in a century because residents there felt those policies are “directly harming their communities” and jeopardizing their safety.
During the interview, Villarreal noted she had been speaking with residents and community leaders in the region who paint a different picture of the area, one of a safe community that does not have the violent crime that Buckingham has described.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.abcnews.go.com
Be the first to comment