Texas offers Trump a blueprint for illegal-immigration crackdown

President-elect Donald Trump prepares for border restrictions and deportations that formed the bedrock of his election victory; the state that has pioneered extreme immigration crackdowns is reaching out to lend a hand.

- Elizabeth Findell

In recent weeks, Texas leaders offered 1,400 acres of land on the border to the federal government for construction of deportation facilities and said the state was looking to offer more. Incoming Trump administration border czar Tom Homan joined Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this past week in two Texas border cities, where he learned about the state's border operation and visited its National Guard soldiers and state troopers.

The budding alliance comes as Abbott over the past three years has used his signature policy priority, Operation Lone Star, to challenge federal authority over immigration and push militarization of the border to new levels. The state has spent more than $11 billion to deploy thousands of National Guard and state troopers to border towns, erect barriers and create a system to jail migrants on low-level state misdemeanor charges.

The effort has had little effect on migration while facing charges of civil-rights abuses, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. But it has become a system that a Trump administration could potentially use, either hand-in-hand with the state or as an example to follow.

"This is a model we can take across the country," Homan told troops last Tuesday.

Here are five ways the Trump administration could follow a Texas playbook:

State land for federal purposes

Last month, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced that she had offered the Trump administration some 1,400 acres along the Rio Grande in rural Starr County. The state recently bought the land for $3.8 million and has suggested Trump build deportation facilities there. The land lies within the river's flood plain and a person familiar with the sale said the previous owners had struggled to find other buyers because development there wouldn't be feasible.