Texas National Guard can now arrest and detain people who illegally enter the US

AUSTIN (AP) — Texas National Guard soldiers can arrest and detain people for entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico under an agreement with the Trump administration that expands the military’s role in immigration enforcement.

The new authority is a shift for the Guard and the military broadly, which has been limited to a supporting role for the Border Patrol. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott gave Texas Guard members the power to arrest migrants on trespassing charges in 2021, but that order was limited to encounters on border landowners’ private property.

Texas’ pact with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, signed Friday, gives the Guard full authority to investigate, arrest and detain migrants for purposes of deporting them. Guard members must work “only under the supervision of a CBP official” and must be able to speak with a CBP official “by cellular phone, radio, or other similar technology,” the agreement says.

“This boosts manpower for border security,” Abbott said late Sunday on the social media platform X.

The military has been limited to tasks like surveillance and building barriers, adhering to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 to keep the armed forces away from civilian law enforcement. But advisers close to President Donald Trump argue there are legal grounds to summon the military to combat narcotics and mass migration.

Trump already has broken from predecessors with military deportation flights. He said he would use a detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold tens of thousands of the “worst criminal aliens.”

The Defense Department deployed 1,600 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border during Trump’s first week in office and had plans to send more. It said Monday more hundreds of military members had arrived in Guantánamo Bay.

Democratic state Rep. Gene Wu said Texas’ agreement makes law enforcement’s job more difficult and dangerous and that Abbott “continues to generate more hate against an already terrified and vulnerable population.”

Matthew Hudak, who recently retired as deputy chief of the Border Patrol, noted that state and federal authorities already work closely together.

“It’s not giving (the Guard) blanket authority to stop people,” Hudak said. “This more than anything sends the message that the federal and state agencies are working together to solve this problem.”

Since 2021, the Texas Guard has had a prominent role in Abbott’s Operation Lone Star that has included busing tens of thousands of migrants to Democratic-controlled cities and installing a barrier of giant buoys in the Rio Grande. Abbott was frequently at odds with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, historically the federal government’s responsibility.

Abbott has defended Texas’ border operations as a “stopgap” between enforcement at the federal level during President Joe Biden’s administration.

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Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.