'The state has not been careful to ensure that individuals’ rights are protected': 240 migrant detainees to be released

More than 240 migrants who spent weeks in detainment will be released from state lock-up facilities after local prosecutors, overwhelmed by the sudden influx of migrant detainees, failed to bring charges against them.

State District Judge Roland Andrade granted the release of 168 migrants jailed for longer than 30 days in Kinney County and 75 detained longer than 15 days in Val Verde County. State law requires that defendants be released on cashless bond or reduced bail if the state is not prepared for trial within certain timeframes.

Houston Chronicle reports that the rise in the number of migrant detainees comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has upped the state's presence at the border through Operation Lone Star, a broad expansion in immigration enforcement in response to the increase in border crossings since President Joe Biden took office.

Abbott has made securing the border one of his top priorities as he approaches re-election. According to Spectrum News, he recently signed a $1.8 billion border funding bill into law that allocates additional money over the coming years toward securing the border. 

Included in the bill was an allocation of about $750 million to the construction of a wall along the southern border and more than $300 million toward law enforcement.

"It is the federal government's job to secure our border, but the Biden administration has failed to do its job," Abbott said, according to Houston Chronicle. "So Texas is stepping up and doing what the federal government is supposed to."

The border funding bill will also allocate $100 million in grant funds for Operation Lone Star.

Critics argue that state officials have created a separate criminal enforcement system for migrants arrested during Operation Lone Star, but without guidelines on what to do when local prosecutors were overwhelmed by the flood of arrests.

"What the state is trying to do is put together this slapdash system in which people are processed in a new way under emergency authorizations and, in doing so, the state has not been careful to ensure that individuals’ rights are protected," Kate Huddleston, attorney with the ACLU of Texas, told Houston Chronicle.

Migrants released after being jailed under Abbott's initiative are usually apprehended by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to San Antonio Express-News. They can then either be deported or released to await immigration hearings.