Marty Schladen

El Paso Times

AUSTIN — Some Texas Democrats are accusing the Texas Department of Public Safety of distributing “propaganda” to the Legislature in an attempt to justify a $400-million-a-year expenditure on border security.

The department, which has surged police to the border, on April 8 sent lawmakers an article titled “America’s immigration system fails, but one state succeeds.” Published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute , the piece details what it calls failures in the U.S. immigration system, including possible corruption of Border Patrol agents and an antiquated visa system.

“The only bright spot appears to come out of Texas and the activities by the Texas Department of Public Safety,” the article says. “Given federal failures to secure the border, the Texas Legislature included nearly $1 billion in the Texas State Budget for border security.”

It later adds, “DPS works closely with federal and local partners along the border to disrupt border activities and keep Texans safe. It is a long slog, but Texas is slowly winning the fight. In this case, state action is succeeding where the federal government fails.”

State Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, said the article uses some questionable sources and reaches dubious conclusions.

“Since when are government organizations relying on a right-wing organization for research?” he asked.

Conservative claims that the border is a war zone have been a sore subject for many El Pasoans at least since 2010, when then-Gov. Rick Perry twice claimed that car bombs had exploded in the city.

They hadn’t. One actually exploded across the border in Juarez at the height of the cartel war, but a spokeswoman only said the governor “misspoke.”

El Paso has consistently been rated one of the safest large cities in the United States and some experts have said that with federal spending on border enforcement far higher than it was a decade ago, the so-called “immigration crisis” is a myth.

Despite that, the Republican-led Texas Legislature last year appropriated $800 million for border security for 2016 and 2017.

Texas Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, said that instead of protecting Texans, the expenditure was intended to grow DPS and the Texas GOP.

“The growth of DPS in recent years has essentially been a political exercise in agency-building based on the success of ‘border security’ as a means to mobilize primary voters,” Rodriguez, chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said in an email. “No other state agency has received so much funding — nearly one billion dollars —- and an expansion of its scope of powers with such little oversight and accountability.”

Blanco said dissemination of the American Enterprise Institute article appears to be a prelude to DPS officials asking for even more when the Legislature convenes in January.

He said its premise —- that Texas is succeeding in immigration policy — is at odds with repeated admissions by DPS Director Steve McCraw that the agency has no power to enforce immigration policy.

“At the end of the day, DPS can’t enforce immigration law, so how is Texas a bright spot?” Blanco asked.

For its part, the agency said it is only trying to keep lawmakers informed.

“The article has a homeland security and national security expert recognizing Texas DPS and the Texas Legislature for its efforts in helping our U.S. Border Patrol partners with border security and addressing cartel drug-related criminal activity,” spokesman Tom Vinger said in an email. “We felt that was worth sharing with the members of the Legislature.”

In a response to questions from Rep. Celia Israel, D-Austin, DPS Deputy Director Robert J. Bodisch said, “The source of this article is Mr. Matt Mayer, former senior official with the Department of Homeland Security and a 2007 Lincoln Fellow with The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and a 2006 American Marshall Memorial Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.”

Some of the sources Mayer relied on in his report are controversial, right-wing outlets such as Breitbart .

And Mayer misstates what is said in a mainstream media article he cites.

“The failure of US Customs and Border Protection to secure the border is so severe that ranchers who live along the border are routinely subject to kidnappings and other threats,” Mayer’s article says.

Rather than detailing routine kidnappings, however, the Albuquerque Journal article is about a single, alleged kidnapping in the New Mexico Bootheel.

Asked if DPS would correct the inaccurate statement it had passed along to lawmakers, Vinger said, “We did not write or approve the article. It was open source material that anyone could find and read.”

Blanco also noted that the article distributed by DPS says Border Patrol agents are vulnerable to being corrupted by drug cartels. That again highlights DPS’s ambivalent relationship with federal immigration enforcement, Blanco said.

During last year’s legislative session, Blanco got into a high-profile fight with DPS Director McCraw over statistics McCraw was touting to claim that the DPS border surge was working.

State leaders claimed the surge, which started in 2014, was needed because the federal government had failed miserably in its responsibility to secure the border.

However, McCraw would only release stats showing combined arrests and drug interdictions by federal, state and local agencies. The DPS director said all the agencies were part of “Operation Strong Safety,” so they all deserved credit for the stats.

In response to an inquiry from U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, however, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowski said that his agency was not part of the operation. He also released statistics showing that federal agents were responsible for the great majority of the enforcement activity McCraw was taking credit for.

This year, the name of the border operation has been changed to Operation Secure Texas, and McCraw and his lieutenants have been showing lawmakers a Border Patrol video that touts “the unprecedented integration between Border Patrol and DPS,” including officers from both agencies “riding and working together” as part of the new program.

But now, Blanco said, DPS has disseminated an article describing how Border Patrol agents are ripe for corruption.

“One week they say ‘Our cooperation is phenomenal,’” he said. “Now they’re saying Border Patrol is corrupt. Which is it?”

Asked about the ambiguity, Vinger said, “DPS and the U.S. Border Patrol are outstanding partners in the fight to secure the border. And both of our agencies know that Mexican cartels seek to corrupt law enforcement officers and public officials in Mexico and the United States to benefit their operations.”

He added, “Specific to DPS, we hold all of our employees to a high standard, and those who fail to meet those high standards are held accountable and disciplined as appropriate.”

Rodriguez said has unfortunately come to expect politicized information from the state’s top law officers.

“In this case, I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that DPS would share what essentially is an opinion-oriented blog post as though it were a legitimate news article,” he said. “I'm concerned that DPS is spending time and resources on what amounts to little more than self-promotion in order to curry favor with legislators in advance of budget discussions next session.”

Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6696;mschladen@gannett.com; @martyschladen on Twitter.









