Gov. Abbott says Texas ready to help with Trump’s mass deportation plans

During a Wednesday press conference — his first since the election — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pledged to help president-elect Donald Trump carry out mass deportations of 11 million undocumented migrants.

During an event in Tyler organized to tout the Republican governor’s school voucher plans for the next legislative session, he switched gears to discuss Trump’s controversial deportation scheme.

“This is a process, and you have to first have a priority list,” Abbott said. “[Trump’s] priority list is that you first begin with the criminals. And he said after he gets done with that, he’ll look elsewhere.”

Last month, Abbott asked Texas lawmakers to earmark $2.9 billion to expand his costly Operation Lone Star border crackdown. With Trump set to take power two months from now, the governor said he isn’t sure those additional funds are still necessary.

Abbott added that Trump assured him in private conversations that his new administration will be dedicated to securing the border and conducting deportation sweeps.

“That means that Texas will have the opportunity to consider repurposing that money for other purposes,” Abbott said. “It could be for education, could be for property tax cuts — sending back to the people of Texas.”

Economists have rung alarm bells regarding Trump’s deportation plans.

Indeed, the American Immigration Council estimates the government would spend $88 billion annually to deport a million migrants a year — a promise made by vice president-elect J.D. Vance on the campaign trail. A one-time effort to deport migrants at the scale promised by Trump would cost $315 billion, the study found.

Trump’s plans would also drain the Texas economy of nearly $5 billion in annual revenue, according to a separate study published in July by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy.

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This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.