Texas gave Donald Trump thousands of acres of land “for the construction of a deportation facility.”
“The office will enter into agreements with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or U.S. Border Patrol to authorize the construction of facilities,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in a letter to Trump. We are fully prepared.” Processed, detained, and coordinated the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history. ”
In October, Mr. Buckingham’s office, the Texas General Land Office (GLO), purchased 355,000 acres of land, an area half the size of Rhode Island. Of this amount, 1,402 acres were given to the federal government.
The land is located on a ranch in Starr County in the Rio Grande Valley on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Buckingham wrote in the letter that he purchased the land from a woman who had previously refused to allow state officials to build a border wall on her property. The state now plans to build 2.5 miles of border wall where it was once denied.
The remaining 353,598 acres near Big Bend National Park, collectively known as the Brewster Ranch, were purchased in October by billionaire tobacco tycoon Brad Kelly, the state’s largest private landowner. It was purchased for $245 million. This was one of the most important public purchases of land in Texas history.
The overtures to Trump come in the wake of a campaign in which he promised to crack down on immigration. President Trump acknowledged Monday that he plans to declare a national emergency and activate the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
The president-elect also appointed former ice director Tom Homan as border czar and vowed to carry out “the largest deportation this country has ever seen.”
“They haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until 2025,” the Heritage Foundation fellow and Project 2025 contributor said before his formal appointment.
In an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Homan, asked about the policies of the former Trump administration that led to family separation, said there was a simple solution: “Families can be deported together.”
“We are committed to using every tool at our disposal to ensure the complete operational security of our borders,” Buckingham said.
