Federal immigration officers arrested 4,170 people across Texas between Oct. 19 and Oct. 29 in an operation the Department of Homeland Security named Lone Star Mission, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a news conference in Dallas on Thursday.
Mullin said about three in five of the people arrested had criminal records and described the other 40% as "collateral" arrests, Houston Public Media and KERA reported. Department officials did not break down those criminal histories or say how many people held violent-crime convictions.
DHS said the effort ran through the Enforcement and Removal Operations field offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Harlingen, working with Texas law enforcement and other federal agencies. In the department's announcement, Mullin credited state and local partnerships and said ICE "has been fully unleashed" to pursue immigrants with criminal records.
A political backdrop
The news conference came five days before the Nov. 3 election and turned political at points, according to the public radio report. Mullin spent much of it criticizing so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and blamed policies of the Biden administration for crime without offering evidence at the event.
The same day, Vice President JD Vance spoke at a GOP rally in Weatherford.
The federal operation is separate from Gov. Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star, the state border program that began in 2021. The state has spent about $11 billion on it, and the federal government has approved $7.5 billion to repay the state for its border spending. Under President Donald Trump, Texas Guard members have also been given federal authority to arrest people on immigration grounds.
