Texas has offered to lease the federal government a 1,400-acre ranch to build detention facilities for President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation effort.
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham made the offer in a letter to Trump on Tuesday. The land is located about 35 miles west of McAllen, Texas, a border town near the state’s southern tip. The letter offered to lease the land to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the U.S. Border Patrol for law enforcement purposes.
Buckingham would agree “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,” she wrote in the letter.
Texas bought the ranch from the previous owner, who refused to allow border fencing to be built on it and had blocked Texas law enforcement from accessing the property, the letter said.
Texas and the state General Land Office that Buckingham heads support Trump’s plan to enact a massive deportation effort after millions of illegal aliens entered the United States under President Joe Biden, Buckingham said in an interview with Fox News.
“What I care about is that we have safe communities, and there is no doubt that we are losing too many of our children to these violent criminals that are coming across the border,” Buckingham said. “I am 100% on board with the Trump administration’s pledge to get these criminals out of our country, and we are more than happy to offer our resources to facilitate those deportations of these violent criminals.”
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“This election was a resounding referendum on the fact that Americans want safe communities. We want people to immigrate legally and legally only and that the administration’s policies over the last four years have failed every American citizen,” she said.
After Trump’s election win, Buckingham said she began looking for ways to help the president-elect implement his deportation agenda. The offer to lease the Starr County ranch came from discussions with her staff.
“Right now, it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We could very easily put a detention center on there, a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country,” she said. “It’s accessible to international airports as well as a major crossing over the river. And so we’re just happy to get help, do anything we can to get these violent criminals off of our soil.”