Border crossings in Texas have fallen to record lows this year, but state troopers dispatched as part of Operation Lone Star have continued to cost the state millions in overtime pay.
Benjamin Wermund looked at the data for the Houston Chronicle, and he said for Operation Lone Star specifically, the Department of Public Safety says it’s on track to spend about $77 million this year.
“(This) would be more than it spent on the operation in 2023, which was kind of when crossings were peaking and there was a takeover in Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and sort of at the height of the operation,” he said. “It’s not too much more, I think a few million. But it stood out to us just given the shift in border crossings, that it would be that high still.”
Wermund said he looked at data from the comptroller’s office on how much troopers and commissioned officers were paid, and cross referenced it with data from the Department of Public Safety to figure out how much of that money came from Operation Lone Star.
“(DPS) did give us some details on some specific cases. They did not give us full time cards or details on what every trooper was doing each day. So it’s a little hard to parse exactly. But in the cases that they did give us details on, they said that basically the operation has shifted from the right on the border for enforcement that we saw in 2020,” he said. “It is now focused on crimes that have what they call a ‘border nexus,’ which would be things like human trafficking, drug smuggling, stuff like that.”
The amount of overtime pay that some individual officers are receiving indicates that they are on duty quite a lot, Wermund said.
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“Some of these officers were working weeks on end, taking two days off in the span of a four or five-week period,” he said. “Experts do warn that working really long hours back-to-back, especially for long stretches, it does take a toll. It can affect judgment and could be potentially dangerous to the officers and the public generally.”
However, the Department of Public Safety says they have made a lot of changes to how staff are assigned to Operation Lone Star to improve outcomes for officers.
“Overtime, these shifts are largely voluntary now, so people can sign up for them if they want,” he said. “That being said, I think a lot of people who are stationed in South Texas do end up kind of taking on a lot more of those shifts. At least, that’s what the agency seemed to indicate to us.”
With border crossings down, Wermund said the focus of Operation Lone Star has shifted to other border-related crimes. But there is no indication that the operation is going anywhere.
“It seems to me that they shifted to maybe even a more statewide approach on this in terms of going after individuals that they think are involved in those types of crimes,” he said. “Obviously, there’s still a pretty heavy DPS presence in South Texas, especially along the highways. And I think that’s probably where a lot of this action is kind of taking place. But they told us that the operation has basically gone statewide.”
