 In 2009, former Texas governor Rick Perry discussed secession from the federal United States government at an anti-tax rally. Today, the same threats are made by Texas governor Greg Abbot over the standoff between the state of Texas and the US federal government. Headlines swept the country that made this clash appear to be rooted in a division of political opinion on immigration between Republican and Democrat governed states. However, the two sides of this standoff are rooted in a deeper phenomenon that has left a split in interest between the federal government and the red state governments, namely southern state governments. To understand the standoff at Eagle Pass, we have to look at Governor Abbot’s Operation Lonestar from its beginning in March 2021, and the demoralization crisis among the Texas national guard members that’s plagued the operation throughout its three year existence. We have to examine its antagonistic first year with the broad Texas national guard membership. We have to look at its second year, where this membership does the historically unprecedented by organizing their own union, forcing the state of Texas into compromises. We have to examine its third year, where guard members defy their command, and refuse orders to commit human rights abuses against migrants. While examining these occurrences, we must also look at how this demoralization crisis creates a political split in the economic interest between the federal and southern state governments, and the private corporate donors that dominate them. The southern states consist of the largest private military industrial complexes, compared to the other states, that together, make up the most incarcerated country in the world. Migrants apprehended at the southern border make up a considerable portion of this prison labor force, whether it be at facilities designated for immigration or general population. The interest of the southern states, governed by the “America first” republican party, particularly relies on US prison labor for their mode of profit. These private corporate donors are compelled to use their governmental power to pull national guard members from their civilian lives, in order to maximize detainment of a prison workforce. In contrast, what the US federal government does is determined by a much larger, international private corporate interest. While the less free, southern states are inclined to maximize a prison work force as rapidly as possible, the US federal government has to consider its overall military strength in the long run. The US federal government doesn’t have an interest in declining its prison population. The Biden administration apprehended over four million migrants in the first two years of its presidency according to United, We Dream. ICE and CBP are federal programs specifically installed to maximize the apprehension of undocumented people in the United States. However, across all military branches, there has been a record low recruitment in the past several years. This record low in recruitment comes at a time after a record number of police officers in the United States resigned during the Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. The US federal government is in a tense point of its history, in conflicts for sanction power with major forces like China and Russia.. US congress members have even begun to draw up bills to invade Mexico. In order to maintain its massive military presence across the entire world, while maintaining a coercive grip on the working class at home, the US federal government can not allow for a demoralization crisis to plague the national guard in a state as critical as Texas, especially as the result of something as non-combative as Governor Abbot’s Operation Lonestar. It can not allow for Texas National Guard service members to gain practice in defying orders, like we have seen all throughout the duration of Operation Lonestar. “Political Pawns” Greg Abbot launched Operation Lonestar on March 6 2021, exactly two months into the Biden presidency. Now it’s become the largest deployment in the history of the Texas National Guard in size and duration. It began with the deployment of 500 guard members. By November, Greg Abbot boasted a total of ten thousand guard members deployed. However, records show that number never reached beyond 6,500. On January 5-10, 2022, ten months into Operation Lonestar, a survey was taken at a base near Brownsville, Texas. The survey was taken among 250 guard members, asking questions and taking direct quotes. The survey was published and distributed by the Military times and the Texas Tribune. The conductor of the survey has not been revealed, as they were not authorized to leak the survey. The survey found that more than half of the guard members “expressed skepticism and frustration with Operation Lonestar.” Nearly thirty percent “vented about the length, haste, and involuntary nature” of the mobilization. One in five members gave no response to “what they liked most about Operation Lonestar,” or stated that they disliked everything about it. Each of the following direct quotes come from separate guardsmen that took the survey. “Members feel like political [pawns] and do not feel like their [issues] are being heard.” “Most of us signed up to help Texas in times of need like hurricanes. This doesn’t feel like we are helping any Texans besides the governor and his ability to say he has activated the [Guard] to the border.” “Whether or not you agree with the politics and morals of [Operation Lone Star], the best thing you could do to improve morale would be to shorten [deployments]. I’ve spoken to very few people who plan on continuing their service in the Texas [National Guard], much less staying on [the border] any longer than they have to. Send people home.” “[Operation Lone Star] cares more about numbers than the impact on individuals and their families. It does greater harm to our members than good by putting their families and own lives at risk for an unclear mission.” “We are disposable in the eyes of top leaders, from the governor on down. The leadership failures of this mission will be a case study for military leaders for years to come.” In the year leading up to the survey, there are several instances that indicate demoralization among the guardsmen. In May 2021, a cavalry troop from Louisiana was temporarily disbanded for misconduct and command issues. This is noted to be a “rare occurrence.” Due to an arrest made for narcotic trafficking in McAllen, Texas, local law enforcement brought drug sniffing dogs to a hotel where many guardsmen were living in the deployment in September. A staff officer at McAllen was quoted by the press saying, “We are literally the biggest threat to ourselves down here,” One instance during the year, a guard member slipped away from her unit, and returned to her home territory of Puerto Rico to seek psychological treatment. On September 10th, 2021, an unknown guard member had slipped a manifesto under every door of his brigade quarter that said the following: “Someone please wave the white flag and send us all home. I would like to jump off a bridge headfirst into a pile of rocks after seeing the good ol’ boy system and fucked up leadership I have witnessed here.” On January 4th, 2022, it is reported four Texas guard members deployed to Operation Lonestar had committed suicide in the span of two months. In response, a retired Texas National Guard general made a public statement admitting that morale is low in the Texas National Guard. By December 31st, 2021, The National Guard had only 327 reenlistments, or roughly 65% of the target set by the National Guard Bureau. This can be compared to the reenlistment rate that occurred in the first three months of 2021, before Operation Lonestar, which reached expectations by 105%. Guard Members Unionize and Defy Orders On February 21st, 2022, the Texas National Guard held its first union meeting in the history of its existence. Talks to begin unionizing began in December, 2021. This came after January 25th, 2022, when the Department of Justice ruled that National Guard members can unionize as public employees when on state active duty, as the laws against military unionization exclusively apply to federal military members. Immediately following the union meeting, the Texas Military Department issued an urgent statement discouraging members from joining the historically unprecedented Texas National Guard Union. However, this came along with an obligation to reform the leadership of Operation Lonestar in the following month. In the face of this historically unprecedented act of defiance, Governor Abbot replaced the general and two other top officials overseeing Operation Lonestar. The Texas National Guard union leader made this public statement at the time of the first meeting: “It'd be one thing if they were like, ‘Hey, yeah, we mobilized too fast and we shortchanged on equipment,’ or ‘We're gonna rectify that.’ Instead, you've got leadership that's acting like a petty ex-girlfriend. Just not taking us seriously. You're not going to fool the guys who are actually here, you may fool your voting base back home, But we know better. And it's kind of insulting. This isn't some politically motivated endeavor, we're not out just to get Beto O'Rourke elected. That's not why we're doing this. We want better conditions, and we, you know, most of us want to go home.” The month after Pro-Publica released an investigation that revealed the number of fentanyl arrests that Greg Abbot credited to Operation Lonestar, actually included the entire number of fentanyl arrest made in the state of Texas away from Operation Lonestar, we see evidence that Texas National Guard members had began defying their command, and breaking orders to keep migrants from drowning in the Rio Grande. Unfortunately, this was revealed to us when tragedy struck at the same Eagle Pass location we see the standoff at today. Spc. Bishop Evans had jumped into the Rio Grande to save a migrant from drowning while not being supplied with a floatation device to do so. He and the migrant he was trying to save both drowned as a result. The Texas Military Department had issued orders for guard members to not enter the water under any circumstances, yet the death of Spc. Bishop Evans revealed that many guard members had been doing the same thing. This gives us a first indication of when guard members at Eagle Pass began to defy their orders from the Texas government, out of honest sympathy with migrants who would die as a result of the orders being carried out. The Texas National Guard union leader, Hunter Schuler, made this public statement in response, once again demanding the end of Operation Lonestar: “Our hope is that the new TMD command staff learns from this tragedy, listens to soldiers, and works cooperatively with leaders on the ground towards safer working and living environments. With the growing number of service member fatalities on Operation Lone Star, what more will it take for the Governor to end this political charade? It is long past time to let the thousands of involuntarily activated guardsmen and women return home to their families - before it’s too late for yet another soldier.” Fast forward a few months to July, the US federal government officially begins a probe into Operation Lonestar for human rights violations. This is followed by civilian protests against Operation Lonestar in the border cities of El Paso and Brownsville in August. On September 14th, Greg Abbot rolled back the number of Texas Guard members deployed from 6,500 to 5,000. On October 1st, the US federal government deployed 2,500 troops to the US border, replacing the 1,500 that Governor Abbot was inclined to roll back, at the demand of the Texas Guard union. On October 6th, 2022, it’s revealed that the Texas Department of Military issued a filing error that resulted in 96% of Guard Members to unexpectedly owe back hundreds to thousands of dollars in taxes to the federal government. This was due to the Texas department of Military not issuing pay stubs correctly. Guard members had been quoted saying that they were curious why their payment checks had been so high. Guard members began writing state representatives asking them to address the Texas Department of Military about the issue. “Made In The Image of God” After the Biden administration sent another 1,500 troops to the US border on May 2, 2023, Greg Abbot began deploying flotation devices into Rio Grande on June, 8th. However, these flotation devices are not the flotation devices that Spc. Bishop Evans needed it in order to survive his heroic attempt to save a drowning migrant. These deployed buoys hid razor wire underneath them, intentionally designed to maim drowning migrants reaching for somewhere to rest. This targeted migrants that guard members, like Bishop Evans, had been heroically diving in to save from drowning in the past year. At Eagle Pass, the same location that Bishop Evans made his heroic attempt, and at the same location we see our standoff between the Texas and federal government today, an email leaked that once again showed Texas national guard members defying their command for the sake of migrant survival. Nicholas Wingate, a trooper and paramedic for the Texas Department of Public Safety, wrote an email to his sergeant explaining why his fellow troopers defied their shift command: “While doing so (going on patrol- author’s insert) we came across 120 people camped out along the fence line. In this group there was several small children and babies who were nursing. The entire group was exhausted hungry and tired. We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning. We made contact with command again and expressed our concerns and we were given the order to tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave.” He went on in the email to explain the type of damage that the razor wire had done to the people they came in contact with. He detailed a man who was severely bleeding from tearing his leg while freeing his small child from the razor wire, a 15 year old child who had broken his leg, and a 19 year old woman who was having a miscarriage from being stuck in the razor wire. He detailed a mother and her two children drowning as a result of the razor wire. “I believe we have stepped over a line into the in humane (sic). We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God. We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such,” He says in the last paragraph of his email, “The wire and barrels in the river needs to be taken out as this is nothing but a in humane trap in high water and low visibility. Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well.” On December 7th, 2023, the Texas Department of Public Safety concluded an investigation into itself in response to Nicholas Wingate’s leaked email, and cleared itself of any wrongdoing. The official report conceded that others besides Wingate had come forward with legitimate concerns. However, on January 2nd, 2024, the Biden administration, obligated to maintain the morale of the entire US military, petitions the US supreme court, to allow the federal government to concede to the demands of the Texas national guard membership, and remove the razor wire buoys that were deployed as a part of Operation Lonestar in June. The federal supreme court ruled that the Biden administration will be able to concede to the demands of the Texas national guard membership, and remove the razor wire from the river on January 22nd. Greg Abbot refuses to comply with the supreme court, which leads to the standoff at Eagle Pass, and the powerless threats of secession that we see today. Demoralization, Defiance, and the Standoff at Eagle Pass In order to understand the standoff at Eagle Pass, we have to understand Operation Lone Star in its three year existence. The standoff at Eagle Pass is not the result of a clash between the Democrat and Republican Party. It’s not the result of a clash between the state of Texas and the US federal government. It is the result of a clash between the broad membership of the Texas National Guard and the entire standing order behind their command. Before the federal government ever ruled for the razor wire to be removed in 2024, we find the Texas National Guard demanding the end of the entire Operation Lonestar as early as February 2022, through their new organized union. We saw heroic Texas guard members defy their orders from Austin for the sake of human dignity, and use their leverage against Operation Lonestar, until one side united economic interest between the federal and state governments was forced to cave into their demands. This is a critical issue to US politics, yet our major corporate media continues to duck from any further investigation into the source of this occurrence. This is why we have to explain everywhere we can to the working people in the rest of the United States, what really led up to the political standoff between the US and Texas governments at Eagle Pass. Author Ned Brown is a community organizer and writer. In the past, he has organized to overturn ICE policies in Arkansas. He is a contributor at CommunityParty.net and the Alienated Press. Archives February 2024
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