The Pink Rabbit on Highway 83

By James Moore  

“They can take my money, they can rob my family, they can lock me away, but I will keep coming back. I will keep crossing, again and again, until I make it, until I am together again with my family.” (Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River).

There were screams before the smoke.

On a quiet Sunday in March, 2023, near Palmview, Texas, a grandmother and her seven-year-old granddaughter were killed when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper, pursuing a car suspected of carrying migrants, plowed into their vehicle. The chase had begun miles away, near La Joya, and ended with twisted metal, sirens, and the small, lifeless hand of a child still clutching a pink toy rabbit.

Their names were Maria Alvarez, 59, and Daniela, the granddaughter who had just started second grade. They were returning from church. Maria’s son later told reporters, “They died for nothing. Nobody even stopped the driver. They never caught the people they were chasing.”

The state of Texas did not hold a press conference. There were no official condolences. Governor Greg Abbott was silent, keeping his political distance from recurring tragedies caused by his Operation Lone Star. The pursuit was just one of over 7,000 high-speed chases since Abbott launched his border immigration stunt in March 2021. The program’s stated purpose was to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Instead, its actual outcomes include dozens of dead migrants, several Texas soldiers who took their own lives, and innocent families like the Alvarezes, destroyed in the crossfire of politics masquerading as law enforcement.

By the end of 2024, at least 80 people had died in Operation Lone Star pursuits, including children and bystanders, according to investigations by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Even some officers began to question the chase policy. “We’re not stopping the cartels,” said one DPS trooper anonymously. “We’re just chasing shadows and wrecking families.”

That has been Abbott’s central accomplishment on the border. Yet the governor’s office continues to tout the operation as “a model of border security.” It’s not really a model, though; it’s a real horror that, so far, has cost Texas taxpayers more than $12 billion, and counting, money that could have gone, for instance, to health care for the state’s one million uninsured children.

Abbott’s border crusade has now reached a level of absurdity not even his most sycophantic supporters can deny. The state of Texas has begun sending National Guard troops to Chicago, the same city to which it spent millions shipping the very migrants it now wants to contain and control. Yes, Governor Greg Abbott misused Texas tax dollars by spending $150 million transporting migrants by bus and plane to Democratic-led cities like Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. The Texas Division of Emergency Management admits to moving more than 120,000 migrants as of October 2025. Abbott, meanwhile, with zero sense of irony, claims Chicago needs help “managing the border crisis,” which, if it is a problem, he exported it there, one busload at a time.

“He sends them here, then sends soldiers to deal with the problem he created,” said Chicago Alderman Ray Lopez, a frequent critic of the program. “It’s like setting a fire and then demanding credit for showing up with a bucket of water.”

Legal scholars say there is nothing under the law that supports Abbott’s actions. Enraged critics note that deploying state troops across state lines for law enforcement duties may violate both the Posse Comitatus Act and federal limits on National Guard authority, which in the Trump era, appears to mean nothing. Federal courts, though, at least temporarily, have already slapped down several parts of Abbott’s immigration actions, including the installation of floating buoys in the Rio Grande and razor wire along riverbanks. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that Texas cannot unilaterally enforce immigration law or obstruct federal officers performing their duties. Abbott’s response was defiance cloaked in schoolyard bully indignation. “We will continue to defend Texas against invasion.”

Abbott’s political theater of the absurd”s grandest stage is Eagle Pass, where he ordered the construction of a military-style base last year. Officially named Forward Operating Base Eagle, the compound cost $131 million and was intended to house 1,800 National Guard troops. Those numbers of troops were never on base. At its peak, the facility hosted barely six hundred and today, residents say it’s mostly quiet. The troops mow lawns, maintain equipment, and wait.

“They’re bored to death,” says Ricardo Salinas, a small business owner in town. “The crossings are way down. Nobody’s coming. But they’re still here, drawing pay, sitting in the sun.”

Nobody from anywhere south of the Rio Grande appears to want to come to Texas and the U.S. migrant encounters at the border have dropped by nearly 70 percent since early 2024, according to Customs and Border Protection. The numbers have plummeted due to tighter Mexican enforcement and international diplomacy, not Abbott’s barbed wire or gunboats. Even his infrastructure is performative silliness. Nonetheless, he keeps the troops in place, flying flags and issuing press releases about “historic security efforts.”

Locals, though, are living in what one rancher called “a permanent military occupation.” Roads are jammed with convoys. Spotlights flood the riverbank at night. Helicopters thunder overhead. “We used to hear coyotes and crickets,” says María Torres, a retired teacher. “Now we hear generators and soldiers.” Greg Abbott’s Texas offers a template for Donald Trump’s America. Billions are being spent on a border where crossings are at their lowest in years, and hundreds of millions have gone into exporting migrants to northern cities, and millions more are consumed to send troops to manage the fallout their government has created.

Analysts estimate that mobilizing and sustaining Guard operations out-of-state could cost $5–10 million per month, depending on the size and duration of the mission. In Texas budget hearings, even Republican lawmakers have begun to murmur doubts. “We’ve got rural hospitals closing and public schools begging for money,” said one West Texas representative privately. “And we’re sending soldiers to Illinois?”

More than immigrant lives have been lost in Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
At least 10 Texas National Guard members have died by suicide since the operation began, likely a reaction to poor living conditions, inadequate mental health support, and long deployments without clear purpose. One guardsman told Army Times, “We feel like props in a campaign commercial.” Abbott, of course, has been absent from counting casualties. He has said nothing about the lost lives of soldiers or innocent citizen bystanders. Military sacrifice has not been noted or honored by the governor or his state.

Political analysts believe the governor is positioning himself for a presidential run when Trump exits the stage. Abbott’s dutiful imitation of Trumpian defiance, refusing to cooperate with federal courts, adopting “invasion” rhetoric, and staging costly stunts, suggests his ambition. His loyalty to Trump, though, is kind of a rank subservience. “Abbott doesn’t lead; he echoes,” said State Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat from San Antonio. “If Trump says jump, Abbott’s already in the air.”

In Chicago, meanwhile, the situation is less theatrical and more chaotic. Shelters are full. Tempers are short. Migrants, many of them Venezuelan families bused from El Paso, wander city streets looking for food and work.

“These are people, not freight,” said Reverend Don Terry, who runs a South Side community kitchen. “They show up tired and scared. They have no idea why they were sent here. Some still think Texas officials were helping them get jobs.” Even the Chicago Police Department seemed puzzled. “We were not consulted,” a city spokesperson said. “Texas did not coordinate this with us or with federal authorities.”

Border to bus to barracks, a sad charade, has become the defining feature of Abbott’s governance. He makes a grand gesture, lets someone else clean up the mess, and declares victory in a press release, very much like Trump claiming the economy is booming and tariffs are a big benefit and America is once more respected on the global stage. The proclamations of both men are fatuous enough to suggest a psychotic break with reality. Taxpayers funding parallel operations in Texas and Illinois that cancel each other out while the governor says he’s protecting Texas from a federal failure. For every dollar spent moving migrants north, though, another is spent sending soldiers after them. For every victory declared at the border, another tragedy unfolds on a Texas highway.

Back in Palmview, the Alvarez family has rebuilt their fence and placed a cross by the roadside. The pink rabbit, sun-bleached now, still hangs there. No one from Austin ever visited. The state has moved on to its next photo op, its next deployment, its next border mission.

“We were just in the way,” Maria’s son said quietly. “That’s all we were.”

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

 

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”