Sarah Davis, a former Republican actress from Houston, told me that the lawmakers in Austin considered Perry “a coach’s house.” “His office was calling and saying that he would not sign this bill. With ABBOTT, you will get a call after the veto.” The employees of the Governor’s office sometimes referred to Aput’s review of the legislation as a “ruling period”. “What I found interesting is the similarity between being a judge and being a ruler,” Abbott later told Austin newspaper American Stetman. “You have lawyers from each side who represent different interests and 99 percent of the time when these interests work themselves and the judge has never to participate.”
In Texas, he restricted the powers of the ruler to some extent, partly because the inherent ruler, who is elected independently, heads the Senate. When Abbott took office, he became one of his political competitors, Dan Patrick, a lieutenant ruler. Patrick, a Republican ideology and had links with Rush Limbo, was a former radio adding broadcasting his sponsors ’homosexuality live on the air. If Abbott represented the Republican current in Texas, Patrick was the embodiment of the tea party wing. Many of the Patrick political people, not Abbott, were considered as a climbing figure in Austin.
The reasons for Patrick, which Patrick entered in the same month that Trump entered the White House, was the reasons for Patrick, most notably an intermittent draft law that requires converting students to use bathrooms that are compatible with the sex that was appointed at birth. A year ago, a similar bill in North Carolina provoked national provinces that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Abbot was kept after the discussion in Texas, leaving the head of the State Council, a moderate Republic named Joe Strauss, to fight this effort. “He will remain outside the conflicts where he does not see a clear gain for himself,” James Hinson, director of the Texas Policy Project, told me at the University of Texas. “On the bathroom bill across the bathroom, let Abu let Strauss take all this heat.”
Abbot, however, was playing both sides. Sarah Davis told me that the chairman of the committee responsible for the Bath Law obtained a speech from the ruler’s office that Abbott “does not want to see this law on my office.” But when the regular session ended without the draft law, Abbott blamed Strauss, called a special session, and added the bill to the agenda. Many Republican lawmakers resigned for Abbott’s General position. But forcing them to reconsider the legislation that he does not want to be approved feels like a betrayal. A Abbott employee told me: “This is what denounced many feelings.”
In the spring of 2017, ABBOTT signed a law that allows local law enforcement employees to verify the migration of anyone who were arrested. Arizona issued a similar law, but the Texas version included an component punishable by police chiefs and police chiefs who did not inquire about the state of immigration, by a fine or removed from his position. Several months ago, Sharif, the province of Travis, Sally Hernandez, defended the policy of the Austin campus, which limited the city’s cooperation to enforce federal immigration. Abbott described it as “Sanctury Sally” and cut more than a million dollars as a boycott grant. He said that the new legislation in Fox News “will put the hammer in the province of Travis and any policy in the city of the haven in Texas.”
The Federal Appeal Court eventually frozen the ruling imposing penalties for local law enforcement. But Abbott succeeded in putting his seal on one of the early Trump era signal battles. The ruler has long realized the political benefit of the issue of immigration. “This is a big problem. I would like eight hundred million dollars for border security. We used to say, “This is a lot of money”, and he used to say, “Yes, it is, and this is what we need.” “When I asked you, you asked how to discuss Abbott, he told me:” If the issue of weak performance is raised in public schools, teachers ’exit, or the fact that our education is behind the state, he will say that there are Mexicans coming to kill you. If you indicate the failure of the power network, it will indicate the border. “
With Abbott ready for his 2018 campaign, he and Carne decided to target an area that considers most other Republicans in Texas a lost issue: the borders, which are of Spanish and democratically historically. Carney commissioned a set of concentration of Latin voters in Mcalain, in southern Texas, and provided unexpected results – the voters wanted less control of weapons and more border security. Many of them were especially hostile to new immigrants. “They are upset with them in obtaining the classroom. They are upset with people’s thinking They are “Illegal,” Carney said. Democrats ignore the Spanish origins. They believe that demography is destiny or whatever. “Carney said that the key to Abbott and the Republicans are the increase in the Republican Party’s turnout in South Texas, and” it is difficult to get a turnout when you do not have local candidates. “
Abbot Super Pile Eric Hollande, a young South Carolina advisor, rented the recruitment of candidates for offices such as the judge in peace and boycott in places along the border where Democrats have not faced Republican competitors for years. Hollande said: “Because Abbott will dominate 2018, I can tell people that they can beat his participation,” Hollande said. With money from PileHollande paid the fees for submitting candidates. His reports went to Carney, who updated the ruler every week. In the end, seventeen candidates are supported by Abbott Pile Their races won that year. Republican effort also benefited in other ways. Early from his trips, Hollande heard from the local party members that Ted Cruz, who was running for the division to the US Senate, was lagging behind his opponent, Beto Ourork. “Abbott Ted Cruz saved me,” Angel, the democratic operative. “Cruz had lost if it wouldn’t have been for Abbott Field.”
The recruitment voltage, known as the Project Red TX, is still working today. In 2024, it focused on persuading the democrats who grew up during the years of Biden. After the elections, in which Trump carried almost all the province of South Texas and the local Republicans, they sorted throughout the region, spoke with Wayne Hamilton, who runs the Red Texas project. He told me that the Democrats behave like immigration is “a racist”. But “it is about people who are not supposed here to take resources from Texas. Tixias are the ones who have to pay for them.” As veteran political correspondent Scott Pradock said, “If anyone has to obtain the credit for stirring southern Texas, he is Abbott, not Trump.”
Early in the morning in July 2023, a five -person Venezuelan family hidden the brush on the banks of Rio Grande, in the Mexican city of Pedras Nigras. Kartel members patrolled in the area in search of immigrants to blackmail. On the other side of the river, in Eagle Pass, a group of Texas guards stood with rifles. Crossing was “Marathon”, a thirty -two -year -old Venezuelan man, Antonio told me. He was a student who was forced to flee the country with his wife, sister, one -year -old nephew, and a seven -year -old wife. He told me: “I came ready for the issue of political asylum.” He knew, in other words, that anyone who reached the United States had a legal right to search for him.
When the family reached the beach, the guards told Antonio that women and children only could enter the country. He said: “I have no place to return to it.” His wife started crying. Soldiers put thick plastic handcuffs on their wrists and ankle and lead him away. “You are committing the crime of infringement of the property of others,” one of them told him.
Lone Star has been developed to confront the legal hypothesis of that it is only allowed for the federal government to arrest immigration. The ruler’s office, which is paid by complaints from livestock breeders such as Martin Wall, found that there was work by charging immigrants who are not documented with misdemeanor of assault on others’ property. Abbott asked landowners to sign agreements that grant agents from the state’s public safety ministry’s permission to conduct arrests on their property. Some refused, but most of them did not. Since 2021, according to DPS, the state has arrested more than fifty thousand people as part of this effort.
Antonio was loaded on a car with six other men and was moved to a temporary treatment center. “We didn’t think this would be dangerous,” he said. After a day or two of sleep on the floor of a large cell, he and the others took another bus and were transported two hours southeast of the Brezco unit, one of three prisons that were used by the state -held state under the supervision of the “Lone Star”. There were large -scale complaints of bad conditions in these facilities: widespread mold, rodents and insects, spoiled food. Antonio was more disturbing because of his treatment as a criminal. He told me that he had not gone to prison before, and that he was several days before he was allowed to speak with his wife. A week later, Bond was published and was handed over to the enforcement of immigration and customs. At that point, he got a preliminary asylum examination, passed it. He was released with a future court date. When we talked, in early February, he was working as a leader in a roofing position in Utah.
“Many Lone Star operations seem to be a very expensive form of the political theater,” said Ammar Jindal, Executive Director of Lone Star Defenders. Its headquarters in Houston, a group of general defenders who suffer from representation of people who are accused under Lone Star leads and cannot afford the costs of lawyers. The organization has helped some seventeen thousand defendants so far. Nearly seventy -five percent of cases involve an infringement of the property of others.
When Abbott announced for the first time the initiative, he said that Texas had to carry out the task committed by the federal government. But although the state can arrest migrants and accuse the property of others, it eventually was forced to return them to the federal immigration authorities. In fact, Gendall said, Texas was creating a “distortion” in detail. For thousands of agents, he used to pay arrests, prisons, treatment centers and employees for their employees, and dozens of judges to hear cases of infringement on the property of others. Immigrants often ended as they started. Many, like Antonio, had reliable asylum claims. Others were simply released due to Ice The resources were limited.
