Texas offered the incoming Trump administration a 1,400-acre ranch for the president-elect's mass deportation operation.
Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham in a letter sent Tuesday to Trump said her office is "fully prepared" to enter an agreement with any federal agencies involved in deporting individuals from the U.S. "to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation's history."
The land in Starr County was purchased by the state from a ranch owner in October and sits in the Rio Grande Valley sector near the border.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Buckingham said there was "no doubt that we are losing too many of our children to these violent criminals that are coming across the border."
"I am 100% on board with the Trump administration's pledge to get these criminals out of our country, and we are more than happy to offer our resources to facilitate those deportations of these violent criminals," Buckingham said.
She said the land, which is essentially farmland, is easy to build on.
"We could very easily put a detention center on there, a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country," she said. "It's accessible to international airports as well as a major crossing over the river. And so, we're just happy to get help, do anything we can to get these violent criminals off of our soil."
Texas has been a focal point of the immigration crisis; it spent $11 billion on Operation Lone Star, a border security initiative launched by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021 in response to rising border crossings and defied directives from the U.S. government on several fronts related to immigration.
Trump is expected to take a slew of executive actions on his first day as president to ramp up immigration enforcement and roll back signature Biden legal entry programs, a sweeping effort that will be led by incoming "border czar" Tom Homan and other Republican immigration hardliners, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Earlier this week, the president-elect confirmed that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form in his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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