First Trespassing Guilty Verdict as Part of “Operation Lone Star” in Texas
On May 9, a jury in Kinney County, Texas – a border community to the west of San Antonio, located in the Del Rio Sector – returned a guilty verdict for Honduran national Lester Hidalgo Aguilar for trespassing. This was the first guilty verdict under Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” which was originally launched in March 2021 in response to the Biden administration’s self-inflicted border crisis. While this is good news, and a step in the right direction, it is the federal government that is the main culprit of the out-of-control illegal migration wave. Thus, the Biden administration must reverse course and step up to fix what it broke – rather than leaving border states to face the entire brunt.
Some media outlets have chosen to portray the 39-year-old Hidalgo Aguilar in a sympathetic light as an individual who was first brought to the U.S. by his parents at the age of 6 and claimed to have escaped gang or cartel violence after he served a prison sentence and voluntarily returned to Honduras. However, the illegal alien was no angel and had a substantial criminal history, “including a 1996 shoplifting charge in Omaha, Nebraska, participating in a home invasion in Florida in 1999, and buying cocaine in California in 2002. After he was jailed in California for the drug charge, he was extradited to Florida for the home invasion charge. Later on, instead of being deported, he voluntarily returned to Honduras and then later moved to Mexico. He later entered the U.S. illegally in Texas, and was arrested.”
Hidalgo Aguilar was caught last September approximately 15 miles from the border, along with a dozen other illegal migrants, while trespassing on private ranch land. The Border Patrol contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety to book the unlawful border crossers on trespassing charges.
After being found guilty – by a jury “comprised solely of Hispanic jurors” – the illegal alien trespasser was sentenced by State District Judge Roland Andrade to one year in prison, the maximum sentence. According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, “Aguilar had already served about eight months of that jail sentence in the two state prisons” and “it was not immediately clear how much longer Aguilar will actually serve.” In any case, multiple articles say that Hidalgo Aguilar will be removed to Honduras upon release. However, given the Biden administration’s anti-enforcement policies – including releasing many criminal illegal aliens – even that should not be treated as a given.
Of course, even if removed, given the administration’s lax border policies, there is little to stop criminal aliens like Aguilar from attempting yet again to return illegally. And that is the crux of the problem: Regardless of all the commendable efforts and actions by Gov. Abbott, these attempts to combat the Biden Border Crisis remain an uphill, Sisyphean battle. That’s because the federal government, which is responsible for immigration and border enforcement, is refusing to do its job, instead only exacerbating the crisis.