I’m confused.
During his 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump said Mexico was sending us murderers, rapists and drug dealers. To keep them out, he promised to build a wall that Mexico would pay for.
Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star on March 6, 2021, to “combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas.”
So why is my red state deploying the Texas National Guard to protect Chicagoans? Does ICE harassing low-wage workers in blue states encourage them to relocate to pro-MAGA areas?
Here, these “dangerous” immigrants, desperate to make a living, might risk their safety to harvest crops and build roads. Economically speaking, red states prosper. Trump and Abbott also might like the visuals.
It’s one thing to see helicopters and masked federal agents create pain and shatter families and kidnap immigrants off the streets in traditionally Democratic cities.
Such chaos in Republican cities would never do, for it would challenge the GOP’s supremely hypocritical law-and-order image.
This blatantly illegal challenge to the right of peaceful protest actually might just be a distraction so Americans abandon concern over their health insurance and forget the Epstein investigation.
Barbara Chiarello, Austin
Dallas Morning News,
Sunday, October 12, 2025