(STARR COUNTY, Texas) — A Texas official, who this week offered the incoming Trump administration a 1,402-acre plot of land to build “deportation facilities,” says other parts of Texas near the border could be offered up in a similar fashion.
“Absolutely — I have 13 million acres, if any of them can be of help in this process, we’re happy to have that discussion,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham told ABC’s Mireya Villarreal in an interview.
The Texas General Land Office purchased the plot of land from a farmer in October originally to facilitate Texas’ efforts to build a border wall. Together with this land, the state office owns about 4,000 acres in Starr County, about 35 miles from McAllen, Texas.
“My office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the United States Border Patrol 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,” Buckingham wrote in a letter addressed to President-elect DonaldTrump, earlier this week.
In an interview via Zoom, Buckingham claimed authorities were frequently “getting reports from the community” that crimes were happening on the property.
“There was a significant mass of humanity and terrible things happening on this property. We heard it again and again and again,” she said.
Buckingham placed the blame squarely on what she called the Biden administration’s “open border policies” and said the county voted Republican for the first time in a century because residents there felt those policies are “directly harming their communities” and jeopardizing their safety.
During the interview, Villarreal noted she had been speaking with residents and community leaders in the region who paint a different picture of the area, one of a safe community that does not have the violent crime that Buckingham has described.
When asked by Villareal to provide details of where those crimes are occurring, Buckingham said most of the migrants are passing through and, using some of the same rhetoric about migrants and crime used by President-elect Donald Trump on the campaign trail, said they “unleash some of their violent criminal habits” in other states across the country.
“Well, a lot of it is migrant-migrant crime, but you’re right, the communities along the border are lovely,” she said. “The people who live there are lovely. Obviously, most of the migrants who come across aren’t interested in sticking around too long. They go to other parts of the country, as we have seen in faraway states — people who came across the Texas border — and then tend to unleash some of their violent criminal habits in other states.”
She added, “But the bottom line is, until we have complete operational control of the border, until we have these violent criminals off of our soil that continue to hurt our sons and daughters, we need to keep working on it and get it done.”
In 2023, in the same county where the Texas commission recently bought the 1,402-acre plot of land, the Biden administration announced it had authorized building about 20 miles of southern border wall using money that was already appropriated under the first Trump administration.
President Joe Biden at the time claimed he had no choice to build the wall, which directly contradicted a promise he made during his 2020 presidential run.
“I tried to get them to reappropriate — to redirect the money,” Biden told reporters at the time. “They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what is appropriated. I can’t stop that.”
After that announcement, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was an “immediate need to construct physical barriers” in the area.
Buckingham said she’s confident she’ll hear back from the incoming Trump administration about her offer of land.
“We have heard through back channels that they’re aware of our letter and they are definitely looking at it,” she said.
Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan, in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, indicated the incoming administration would be open to using the land Texas is offering.
“Absolutely we will,” he said, adding that when they arrest a migrant, they’ll need a place to detain them.
Democratic governors of border states — such as Arizona and California — have said they will not aid the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told ABC News Live earlier this week that she would not use state police or the National Guard to help with mass deportation.
ABC News’ Mireya Villareal contributed to this report.
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