It’s been over a year since Governor Greg Abbott first unveiled his plans to use state money—with about $1 billion earmarked—to carry out former President Donald Trump’s dream of building a “big, beautiful wall” along the Texas-Mexico border.
So far, the realization of those plans—not counting some stretches of razor wire-topped chain link fence, stacked shipping containers, and concrete highway barriers—has been limited to a remote parcel of public land in rural and flood-prone Starr County owned by the Texas General Land Office, where contractors recently completed just under two miles of 30-foot-tall steel bollard fencing.
Despite the sluggish progress, Abbott ostensibly intends to erect several hundred miles of additional wall along Texas’ southern frontier, a key component of his sprawling border security scheme known as Operation Lone Star, which aims to supplant federal responsibility for immigration enforcement and border security.
