Texas officers gain access to Rio Grande's Fronton Island for border security efforts

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has authorized the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers working through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star, access to Fronton Island in the Rio Grande River.

The island is roughly 170 acres and located southeast of Fronton, Texas, in Starr County.

According to Texas General Land Office records, Fronton Island is state-owned land, Buckingham explained, which is why Texas law enforcement has access to it. The island has increasingly been used by cartel scouts, coyotes, and operatives to smuggle illicit drugs and people, law enforcement officials report.

“It is my commitment to Texans to do everything in my power to gain complete operational control of the southern border,” Buckingham said in a statement issued on Thursday. She also did it to protect Texans from foreign nationals illegally entering between ports of entry, she said.

Among the more than 8 million illegal border crossers since January 2021, at least 1.6 million of them are “gotaways,” according to an analysis by The Center Square. Gotaways is the official term used by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to define foreign nationals who illegally enter the U.S. and don’t return to Mexico or Canada. They don’t make immigration or asylum claims and make every effort not to get caught by law enforcement, officials have told The Center Square. Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officials have no idea who or where they are, how many are wanted or convicted criminals or are on a federal terrorism watch list.

Fronton Island is the latest state-owned island the GLO authorized use of specifically to enforce OLS border security efforts.

In April, Buckingham declared that two islands in the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, Texas, in Maverick County, were state-owned land. One island is roughly a half-acre; another is roughly 45 acres.

“Like many of these islands, they were likely created by a buildup of sediment on the river bottom,” the GLO explained.

In April and in September, Buckingham wrote letters to DPS and the Texas Rangers granting them access to the islands for the purpose of “policing in order to curb the ongoing border crisis at our southern border.” The GLO is also permitting vegetation management, “provided compliance with all applicable state and federal regulations” are upheld, it says.

By granting more access to islands located at “the heart of the border crisis,” Buckingham said it’s her hope that doing so will help Texas’ “robust push to control” an unprecedented border surge. “While the federal government refuses to safeguard Texas communities, the General Land Office will step up and assist our state in its robust border security efforts,” she said.

Buckingham was recently elected to lead the General Land Office, the oldest state agency in Texas. It was created to determine “who owned what and where after the Texians and Tejanos won independence,” the GLO states on its website. The agency currently “manages state lands, operates the Alamo, helps Texans recovering from natural disasters, helps fund Texas public education through the Permanent School Fund, provides benefits to Texas Veterans, and manages the vast Texas coast.”

Since Gov. Greg Abbot launched Operation Lone Star in April 2021, OLS officers have apprehended more than 427,600 illegal foreign nationals and made more than 33,800 criminal arrests, with more than 30,700 felony charges reported, according to the latest data from the governor’s office.

They’ve also seized over 426 million lethal doses of fentanyl, as of Sept. 1, enough to kill more than everyone in the U.S.