Abdoul, a West African from Mauritania, experienced an unexpected detour before moving to New York City this year along with thousands of other migrants: he spent several days in a rural Texas jail on trespassing charges for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Abdoul granted permission for his last name to remain unseen in order to avoid endangering his asylum application when he spoke with the AP on video. He left his own nation because, according to him, he was in risk of dying there for opposing the authorities. While awaiting documentation for a work permission in the United States, he is currently residing in Brooklyn with his cousin, an Uber driver.
After two years of operation, the multibillion-dollar border security strategy Operation Lone Star in Texas is still being implemented in an opaque manner with minimal oversight.
Republicans who favor it think it’s a good reaction to the immigration policy of President Joe Biden. Over 12,500 people have been arrested as a result of the campaign between the summer of 2021 and October 2023, according to statistics obtained by The Associated Press. In addition to bussing thousands of immigrants across the nation, financing additional border barriers, and deploying thousands of officers, the plan has cost close to $10 billion.
However, there is little evidence the program is deterring immigration.
Under a bill signed on Monday by Republican Governor Greg Abbott, Texas will empower police far more authority to detain migrants beginning in March, and local judges will have the authority to order them out of the nation. The measure is the most drastic attempt by a state to control immigration since an Arizona legislation from 2010 that opponents denounced as a “show me your papers” bill and which the US Supreme Court partially overturned.