Feds often hand migrants over to state police rather than process immigration claims, complaint says

A group of migrants walk off a pickup truck after being apprehended by Department of Public Safety officers at a train depot in Spofford on Aug. 25, 2021. U.S. Border Patrol agents took into custody women and children found with the same group. (Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune)

Many of the thousands of migrants arrested on trespassing charges under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security operation have been locked up in Texas prisons only after U.S. Border Patrol agents handed them over to state police, according to a new complaint to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

At least once, Texas Department of Public Safety officers never even saw the arrested migrants on the scene of the alleged trespassing, instead picking them up from federal agents at a gas station and taking them to jail, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas reported Friday in its letter to federal officials.