Texas National Guard, State Troopers deployed to respond to border crisis

The deployment, dubbed "Operation Lone Star," seeks "to combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas." The operation was ordered after Abbott held a meeting with Texas Department of Public Safety Director Colonel Steve McCraw.

"The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration," Abbot said in a Saturday statement. "Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis."

The announcement comes as the United States experiences a surge in migrants crossing the border with Mexico. The migrant flow began increasing in January as President Joe Biden awaited his inauguration, with many Republicans attributing the increase to his relatively soft stance on immigration compared to his predecessor Donald Trump.

The United States has also seen a surge in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border in the same period. At the beginning of January, 47 unaccompanied minors were crossing the border on a daily basis. By the beginning of March, that number had reached 321.

The Biden administration has moved to reopen immigration facilities for minors in response to the surge, a move which has been criticized by progressives as unhumanitarian and by conservatives as hypocritical.