Texas offers 1,400 acres to incoming Trump admin as staging ground for deportations

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has told President-elect Donald Trump to look to the Lone Star State as a staging ground for mass deportations. She wrote to Trump and offered him 1,402 acres of Texas land in the Rio Grande Valley, right near the southern border with Mexico, to get the job done, Fox News reported in an exclusive.

Buckingham’s letter to the president-elect, released to Fox News Digital, explains how her office is "fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 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."

"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 told Fox News Digital Tuesday. "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."

The Texas General Land Office bought the land last month in order to build more of the border wall – one of Trump’s legacy projects that the Biden-Harris administration halted. The land was a private ranch before the state took ownership and has seen its share of criminal cartel activity, from drug smuggling to human trafficking. Buckingham said Trump’s victory prompted her to rethink how to use the property and a deportation zone seemed like an obvious choice.

"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 told Fox News. "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."

With two months to go until his Jan. 20, 2025 inauguration, Trump has spent the last two weeks getting his transition team in place and nominating scores of names to occupy top jobs in his administration. He remains committed to border security and his promise to deport millions of illegals. Trump said Monday that he will declare a national emergency and use the military for mass deportations. This has prompted several states, “sanctuary” cities and even police departments to push back on Trump’s policy. Gov. Katie Hobbes said Monday she won’t cooperate with deportations as has Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL), who said he won’t assist the federal government with deportations and Gov. Maura Healey, who said she “absolutely won’t comply” with the policy. Even newly installed Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said last week that his officers will not deport illegals.

Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has put migrants on notice that the new administration intends to follow through on its promise to deport them and has told those states or cities reluctant to help that he will “flood” US sanctuary cities with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to get the job done. While reiterating Trump’s desire to destroy criminal cartels, Homan has recommended that illegals “self-deport.”

Buckingham said the presidential and Congressional elections confirmed that Americans are behind Trump’s immigration policies and have soundly dismissed the open borders era of the Biden-Harris administration. "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 told Fox.