State leaders will need to come up with an extra $1.35 billion to keep thousands of Texas National Guard troops stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border for another year.
On Tuesday, the head of the Texas Military Department told Senate budget writers that funding for the controversial border security push is expected to run out in September.
Maj. Gen. Thomas M. Suelzer acknowledged the price “is not small” but called the return on investment “significant.”
It remains to be seen whether state lawmakers will pump more money into Gov. Greg Abbott’s border mission, which is already running a tab of more than $4 billion.
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In recent months, Abbott and top legislative leaders have pointed to a spike in migrant crossings as justification to inject huge sums of state money to keep the border mission, known as Operation Lone Star, afloat. Yet civil rights groups and some Democrats have said the initiative jailed migrants without giving them adequate legal protections and touted inflated arrest statistics. The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation.
