U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out an enforcement action in early 2025. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / usicegov to last week's election, it was likely the State of Texas, under Gov. Greg Abbott, would continue functioning as an extension of President Donald Trump's mass-deportation campaign - using levers throughout the state bureaucracy to help the president round up hardworking Texans, perhaps most notably through the Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sign up Abbott has spent his nearly 12 years in office expanding his gubernatorial power through executive orders and disaster declarations, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Much of that, in the era of Operation Lone Star, was directed at enforcing so-called border security at the state level, sending millions to contractors for building walls and other pricey services in Texas' southernmost counties.

The governor entrenched immigration enforcement as a state function, through both executive action and signed legislation, even as people illegally crossed less and less into Texas from Mexico.