Juan Antonio Gomez Torres was earning barely $80 a week shaping mud into bricks in the dusty hills above San Felipe, Mexico. When his wife became pregnant with their fourth child, he decided to try his luck crossing into the United States to look for better-paying work.
Weeks later, Mr. Gomez called his cousin from a jail in Kinney County, Texas, desperate for money. After swimming across the Rio Grande, Mr. Gomez had been arrested by armed state police officers on a trespassing charge, with bail set at $1,000 — more than a quarter of his yearly income.
Mr. Gomez promised to repay his cousin after he appeared in court on the trespassing case, when under normal circumstances his bail money would be returned to him. But that never happened. No sooner had Mr. Gomez been released than Kinney County officials handed him directly over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities, who promptly deported him back to Mexico. Unable to show up in court, he was told his bail would be forfeited and the $1,000 deposited into Kinney County’s own accounts.
He was not the only one. Since Gov. Greg Abbott stepped up the state’s own immigration operations during a surge in unauthorized border crossings in 2021, Kinney County has forfeited bail from hundreds of migrants, many of whom, like Mr. Gomez, were trying to escape poverty in their home countries.
The arrests, which are continuing despite a significant reduction in border crossings, are part of a contentious and potentially lucrative new dynamic on the southern border as states like Texas attempt to take on a larger role in immigration enforcement, traditionally the purview of the federal government.
More than 39,000 migrants have been arrested in counties along the border on charges of trespassing on private land and other state violations, part of Governor Abbott’s multi-billion-dollar effort to step up policing on the border, known as Operation Lone Star.
