Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has offered President-elect Donald Trump the use of a 1,402-acre ranch in Starr County, on the U.S.-Mexico border, for the construction of deportation facilities.
Buckingham, a Republican, made the offer in a letter sent to Trump on Tuesday in which she pledged to support what she described as "the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation's history."
Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a key component of his successful 2024 presidential election campaign. Speaking at a rally in October the then Republican candidate said that if he won "the border will be sealed. The invasion will be stopped. The migrant flights will end." On Monday, Trump indicated he plans to declare a national emergency and deploy the military to assist with deportations in a post on his Truth Social website.
Newsweek contacted President-elect Donald Trump's transition team and Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham for comment on Wednesday by email outside of regular office hours.
In her letter to Trump, Buckingham said: "The Texas General Land Office (GLO) currently owns a 1,402-acre tract roughly 35 miles west of McAllen, Texas.
"My office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security...or the United States Border Patrol 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."
The Texas General Land Office told Newsweek that Buckingham was offering the incoming Trump Administration the land to lease.
Buckingham said in the letter that "in less than 24 hours" after the ranch was purchased by the GLO she "granted a 7,681-foot-long (1.45-mile) easement across the property, allowing our Texas Border Wall to be built." She said the previous owner had "refused to allow the wall to be built" and "actively blocked law enforcement from accessing the property."
In June 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced the state would build a wall along its border with Mexico. According to The Texas Tribune, as of July 2024, some 34 miles of steel bollards had been built along the 1,254-mile state border. During his 2016 presidential election campaign, Trump had vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, though only a small section was completed during his first term. At the Republican National Committee in July, he said "finishing the wall" will be a priority for his second term.
The 1,402-acre ranch site offered by Buckingham is currently in agricultural use producing a range of goods including onions, grain, corn, cotton and soybeans according to the GLO press release published after its purchase in October.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Buckingham explained why she had offered the ranch as a deportation site, describing it as "easy to build on," near the Rio Grande river and close to several airports.
She added: "We figured, hey, the Trump administration probably needs some deportation facilities because we've got a lot of these violent criminals that we need to round up and get the heck out of our country."
According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute "immigrants in the United States commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population, notwithstanding the assertion by critics that immigration is linked to higher rates of criminal activity."
The think tank cited a 2020 study based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety which showed immigrants, both legal and illegal, were arrested at less than half the rate of U.S.-born citizens for crimes involving violence and/or drugs.
On November 10, Trump announced Tom Homan, previously his acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), would be "in charge of all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin."
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