Texas Republicans have been wary of unmanned aerial vehicles, with some even backing proposed laws to allow the citizenry to gun down invasive airborne drones. Now, thanks to years of Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott’s multi-billion dollar border mission, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is ushering in what might fairly be called the Drone Star State with an expansive fleet of flying eyes in the sky.
A decade ago, DPS didn’t even have a drone program. Now, in 2025, it touts one of the largest in the country. Since the launch of Operation Lone Star in 2021, DPS has more than doubled its drone fleet.
In December 2020, the state police had fewer than 200 drones; now the agency’s inventory has ballooned to more than 450 drones, and nearly 400 employees are trained to remotely operate them, according to DPS records obtained by the Texas Observer. (Agency records indicate that 95 of those drones were not operational as of September.) DPS says the fleet is valued at around $3.7 million.
That puts the Texas state police in the same league as the U.S. Border Patrol, which maintains around 500 drones, a spokesperson for the federal agency told the Observer. DPS’ fleet also exceeds that of the state police agency in Chihuahua, the northern Mexico state that borders much of West Texas. Chihuahua purchased 75 drones as part of a $200-million dollar investment in a sprawling surveillance system that it has offered to share with Texan and federal U.S. authorities.
DPS’ drones are small remotely operated devices—most can sustain around a 45-minute flight time, and many are equipped with thermal cameras.
Under Operation Lone Star, DPS has deployed its growing unmanned aerial systems (UAS) fleet to help police the Texas borderlands. In 2023, nearly 70 percent of its drone flight hours were for Operation Lone Star missions, and DPS drone pilots assisted Border Patrol more than 3,000 times, according to DPS slide presentations on the agency’s drone program, which were obtained via an open records request. In 2024, as migrant crossings plummeted, the drone program’s border emphasis decreased slightly; that year, only 61 percent of flight hours supported Operation Lone Star missions, and Border Patrol assists dipped to around 1,800. In 2025, slightly more than half of its drone flights were dedicated to Operation Lone Star efforts, according to DPS.
Surveillance watchdogs warn that technologies tested at borders are often exported to the interior for other police operations. “Surveillance technologies rarely stay cabined to their original purpose, expanding their reach and scale without any ability of ordinary citizens to push back,” Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in police surveillance technologies, said in an email.
Beryl Lipton, an investigative researcher at the civil-liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the general public needs to understand that drones are essentially flying police officers. “If I’m in my backyard, if I’m on my deck, do I expect that I have to encounter a law enforcement camera? I shouldn’t have to,” Lipton said. “Should I have to deal with a cop zipping by all of the time? I don’t think so.”
DPS says it has limitations on how and where it deploys drones. An agency training module obtained by the Observer states that officers should not retain drone-recorded data to monitor constitutionally protected activities, conduct warrantless surveillance on private property, or develop probable cause.
But along the border, DPS can operate its drones without some of those protections. “Within 25 miles of the United States border, images are authorized to be captured of real property or of persons on real property,” a slide on the training module reads. “But only for the purposes of ensuring border security.”
In a written statement, DPS spokesperson Sheridan Nolen said: “DPS UAS are permitted to operate over private property with consent from private property owners or when a mission is specifically tied to border security operations, like interdicting criminal activity between ports of entry.”
The agency did not say how it decides which missions are determined to be related to border security operations.
The Texas Military Department, another state agency at the heart of Operation Lone Star, also maintains its own drone program. In 2023, Governor Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 423, which allows state military forces to capture images using drones for a variety of purposes, including border security operations.
Texas DPS has not limited its use of drones to border security. As part of a multi-agency immigration raid at an Austin-area birthday party in April, DPS surveilled the property with drones, deported attendees told the Observer; Nolen said the drones were present for “overwatch purposes.”
The state has also deployed drones to surveil First Amendment-protected activities. In October, DPS sent its unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor protesters at “No Kings” demonstrations, according to records obtained and reported on by DroneLife, an industry publication.
In April 2024, when University of Texas students and community members demonstrated against Israel’s siege on Gaza, drones flew above attendees during the protest and followed as they exited campus. When asked about the drones at the pro-Palestine demonstration, Nolen said in a statement to the Observer: “DPS believes strongly in Texans’ right to free speech and assembly while also following rules set in place to maintain a safe environment for demonstrators and the public. While we do not discuss specific details of our operations, we can tell you that the department utilizes UAS as part of our efforts to monitor the safety of participants, law enforcement personnel and the general public during demonstrations like the one you reference.”
While it maintains a massive fleet, DPS’ UAS program might soon be challenged: National security-hawk Republicans in Congress are pushing for a possible ban on products from Chinese drone manufacturers DJI and Autel, whose products constitute 97 percent of DPS’ drone inventory, according to agency records.
Republican state lawmakers have also filed bills in recent sessions that would have prohibited state government entities from acquiring drones from companies tied to foreign adversaries like China, but they have not passed.
Whatever happens with such legislation, the eyes of Texas DPS, for now at least, will be upon us.
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