When Gov. Greg Abbott first ordered 500 members of the Texas National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border in March, Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston, a 20-year National Guard veteran and senior enlisted leader, dutifully accepted the mission. A few weeks in the Rio Grande Valley, after all, was hardly an exotic post. The National Guard has had a presence on the border since 1989, conducting patrols and counter-narcotics operations among countless other missions.
Yet weeks into that initial deployment, Featherston started hearing whispers from fellow leaders that Abbott was planning a significant ramping up of guardsmen on the border. Featherston was puzzled. While the number of migrant border crossings had steadily increased since the beginning of the year, he believed there was no unique threat that warranted such an extreme surge in troops.
“People have been coming across that border, drugs have been coming across that border since there was a border,” Featherston told the editorial board. “Inside the command group, it was common knowledge that this was just Gov. Abbott doing his political thing, trying to be like Trump, you know, ‘Build a wall.’”
In August, state lawmakers buttressed Abbott’s border sheriff cosplay with nearly $2 billion in border security funds over two years. The Texas Military Department, which oversees the state’s National Guard, received $311 million to deploy an additional 1,800 soldiers to the border. By November, Abbott was beating his chest in interviews about the 10,000 National Guard and Department of Public Safety troopers on the border carrying out Operation Lone Star — the official state mission to arrest and jail migrants on state charges and erect border fencing on privately owned land.
But what was surely meant to be a show of strength for Abbott’s re-election campaign — and a profile boost for an executive whose presidential ambitions are well known — has steadily devolved into a disaster that is drawing withering criticism from Abbott’s Republican primary opponents. The sheer number of guardsmen Abbott ordered to the border meant that many troops with hardship exemptions — for such things as caring for sick relatives and newborn babies or starting new careers — were denied and forced into deployment. Tuition benefits have also been cut and the state has struggled to pay soldiers on time.
Living conditions for some of the guardsmen stationed at the border appear to be closer to refugee camps than barracks. A video Featherston posted on his Twitter page showed a cramped trailer with 36 beds packed in like sardines, and he told the board that even basic necessities such as bathrooms are absent. The Army Times reported last month that troops are chafing at what they perceive as “a lack of purpose” to their mission. One junior solider assigned to observation posts at the border told the Army Times that they mostly just sleep in their Humvee.
Houston Chronicle
