Border effort like whack-a-mole

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry brags about confronting President Barack Obama in 2014 about the problems with illegal immigration and crime along the state’s 1,254-mile border with Mexico.

“I told him, ‘Mr. President, if you do not secure this border, Texas will,’ ” Perry said when he announced his second run for the presidency in June 2015.

“I deployed the Texas National Guard. And the policy worked,” Perry said.

Sort of, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety told the state House Homeland Security and Public Safety committee in Brownsville last week.

DPS Director Steve McCraw told committee members that the $800 million the Legislature invested in border security last year has brought down border-related crime in Starr and Hidalgo counties, but criminals have shifted operations to Zapata and Webb counties to the west and Cameron County to the east.

When the Legislature convenes in January, DPS has said it will ask lawmakers for an additional $300 million to keep the border operation going and add more officers.

The enforcement strategy is working “exactly as we expected,” McCraw said.

That means Perry’s victory dance last year was premature.

McCraw is right. No operation this big will work except through a long, expensive campaign. DPS has to get a foothold in one area and expand from there.

The question is, how much money will legislators and their constituents be willing to devote to it?

McCraw will have to demonstrate a reasonable possibility of success, not just a border money pit.

This story was originally published October 3, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Border effort like whack-a-mole."