538,141 Apprehended: Texas Says Operation Lone Star Is Just Getting Started
Five years after launch, Texas says Operation Lone Star has helped apprehend 538,141 illegal foreign nationals and is still targeting cartel networks, smugglers, and terrorist threats.
Five years after Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, Texas officials say the mission is still doing exactly what Washington refused to do for years: secure the border, arrest criminals, and disrupt cartel operations before they spread deeper into your community.
According to data obtained by The Center Square, Operation Lone Star officers apprehended 538,141 illegal foreign nationals from March 2021 through February 2026. They also deterred 157,112 illegal entries, made 63,659 criminal arrests, logged 12,392 criminal trespass arrests, and tallied 10,552 human smuggling arrests with 23,717 related charges.
That is not a side project. That is a full-scale state response to a federal failure.
The Numbers Are Doing the Talking
If you want the quick version, here it is:
538,141 illegal foreign nationals apprehended
157,112 illegal entries deterred
63,659 criminal arrests
10,552 human smuggling arrests
51,091 felony charges
668 stash houses found
8,721 people recovered and referred from those stash houses
And yes, illegal crossings have dropped sharply under President Trump's second administration. The Center Square reports crossings are down more than 95 percent. Good. That is what happens when the White House stops pretending border enforcement is somehow impolite.
But a drop in crossings does not mean the mess created over the previous four years magically disappeared. Cartel infrastructure does not pack up and go home because somebody finally started enforcing the law again.
Cartels Built Networks. Texas Is Still Hunting Them.
Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez told The Center Square that DPS is still making between 80 and 100 criminal arrests along the Texas-Mexico border every week. That excludes additional arrests made through the larger multiagency Operation Lone Star task force working in counties across the state.
In other words, the border crisis may have cooled from daily chaos to ongoing cleanup. But cleanup still matters when the house was trashed.
Texas officers have pursued 5,135 bailouts, those high-speed smuggling cases where suspects ditch the vehicle and scatter to avoid capture. Because of course cartel couriers are not filing travel plans with the state.
Why Texas Officials Say the Threat Has Changed
The original 2021 launch came after a massive surge triggered by Biden-era policies. When Abbott announced Operation Lone Star, he said Texas would not be an accomplice to open-border policies that endangered Texans and enriched cartels. That warning looks a lot less rhetorical now than it did back then.
The mission is no longer just about counting crossings. It is about dealing with what years of mass illegal entry left behind.
Olivarez told The Center Square that Operation Lone Star is now more critical than ever because of threats involving special interest aliens and suspected terrorists still crossing or already inside the country. He cited recent arrests involving individuals from Pakistan as well as prior arrests involving people from Afghanistan, Egypt, the Congo, Mali, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and other countries Texas officials say have terrorism-related concern.
“OLS is more critical now than ever because we face more threats than we've ever faced before especially from Special Interest Aliens and suspected terrorists who are still coming across the border,” DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez told The Center Square.
That is not cable-news drama. That is a public safety briefing.
The Venezuelan Gang Problem Did Not Solve Itself
Operation Lone Star has also shifted heavily toward interior enforcement and gang disruption, especially involving Tren de Aragua.
In September 2024, Abbott declared Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization in Texas and directed DPS to intensify operations against the gang. State officials described the group as violent, fast-moving, and deeply involved in human smuggling, trafficking, extortion, and other organized crime.
According to the latest reporting, more than half a million Venezuelan nationals have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Texas since Operation Lone Star began. From January 2021 through January 2026, Operation Lone Star officers apprehended 4,198 Venezuelans for crimes committed in Texas involving more than 7,200 charges. As of early January 2026, Texas law enforcement agencies had active warrants out for 555 wanted Venezuelans believed to be illegally in the United States.
As of late February, Texas had documented 173 Tren de Aragua members in the state's gang database.
That matters. A lot.
Because once criminal organizations get breathing room, they do what criminal organizations always do. They expand. They recruit. They hide in plain sight. Then everybody in government acts shocked when neighborhoods start paying the price.
Operation Lone Star Was Never Just About the River
One of the clearest lessons from the last five years is that border security does not stop at the border.
Texas says Operation Lone Star officers are also targeting South American Theft Groups, commercial vehicle crimes, stash houses, and smuggling corridors that run well beyond the Rio Grande. DPS also points to coordination with federal, state, and local partners, including ICE, as part of a longer-term effort to identify and remove dangerous offenders who were released into the country during the previous administration.
That is the piece the legacy media usually skips. The damage from bad policy keeps showing up long after the cameras leave.
Earlier this month, a Fort Bend County sheriff's deputy, Kenneth Lewis, was killed after stopping to help stranded motorists and being struck by a Salvadoran man in the country illegally, according to The Center Square's report on the case. Not every border failure looks like a surge photo. Sometimes it looks like a family burying a deputy.
What Comes Next
If you are waiting for Texas to declare victory and go home, do not hold your breath.
State officials say the next phase is identifying where remaining threats are, locating them, and removing them. That means counterterrorism work, intelligence coordination, gang tracking, interior arrests, and a lot of unglamorous cleanup after years of federal negligence.
The political class spent years telling you the border was under control. Texas spent those same years counting bodies, arrests, stash houses, and smuggling charges.
Turns out one of those approaches was real.