Forty-five days into President Joe Biden’s first and only term, Governor Greg Abbott announced plans to launch Operation Lone Star (OLS), the latest and most expansive in a long line of Texas border security surges. Just shy of three months later, Abbott signed a declaration of disaster, citing an “ongoing and imminent threat” from migrants crossing into Texas.
This state of disaster has since been continuously renewed, even as border apprehensions have fallen precipitously. Now four years old, the order has lasted even longer than the governor’s COVID-19 declaration, which he let expire in June 2023. In this time, the Texas Legislature has allocated more than $11 billion to fund the sprawling tentacles of the OLS mission, which centers on a massive deployment of state police and soldiers along the border. This legislative session, another $6.5 billion has been initially proposed by House and Senate budget writers.
Using his disaster authority, Abbott has suspended procurement laws that require agencies to competitively bid out major contracts and award them to firms that provide the best value to the state. This has given the main state agencies involved in OLS—the Department of Public Safety (DPS), the Military Department (TMD), and the Division of Emergency Management (TDEM)—a free hand to dole out huge sums of money to private contractors and vendors through no-bid contracts and emergency purchase orders.
Contracted services range from busing migrants from the Texas border to Democrat-run cities outside Texas; running temporary holding facilities to process migrants detained under Abbott’s “catch-and-jail” scheme; and operating base camps to support National Guard soldiers and other personnel. The list of purchased matériel, meanwhile, seems fit for a nation at war. Drones, helicopters, and airplanes. All-terrain vehicles, tactical marine vessels, and bulldozers. Artificial intelligence surveillance software and mobile surveillance units. Fuel and generators, food and water, zip-ties and razor wire.
“Prosecuting people for migration is big business.”
Since 2021, DPS, TMD, and TDEM have spent roughly $3.5 billionthrough no-bid contracts, emergency purchase orders, and other informal procurement processes under the governor’s border disaster declaration, according to records obtained from those agencies and reviewed by the Texas Observer. (The rest of OLS’ $11 billion has largely gone to state personnel costs and competitively bid contracts for a state border wall.)
From 2021 through the end of 2024, TMD has awarded about $2.8 billion in emergency contracts for the declared border disaster, according to department records. TDEM, which is the state equivalent of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has issued purchase orders totaling around $760 million over the same period. DPS—which ostensibly runs OLS—has spent $215 million on emergency purchases under the disaster declaration. (In a statement to the Observer, the state police agency said that 79 percent of those expenditures actually did “undergo a complete competitive procurement process” or were “listed on an existing [competitively bid] state or [U.S. General Services Administration] contract.” The agency declined to provide further clarification.)
This massive spending spree has come without the typical guardrails of state procurement laws meant to protect against waste and contracting grift—and with little oversight from the Legislature. The quasi-permanent nature of Abbott’s border disaster has turned what are supposed to be temporary disaster provisions—the lifting of state regulations that may impede response to a finite emergency—into the status quo.
“This emergency has been going on since 2021. Not to [competitively bid] the award means the government throws away with both hands the opportunity to get a low award for the taxpayers,” Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore professor and expert in government contracting, told the Observer. “Rank favoritism, such as a sole-source award to a contractor who is a major donor to the governor, leads past waste to outright corruption, for the motivation of the award is not the bid’s economy but the governor’s campaign treasury.”
Indeed, a small class of private contractors has grown plump feeding at the Operation Lone Star trough. And some, in turn, have plied Abbott and his Republican allies with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.
“This is a corrupted use of the governor’s emergency powers,” state Representative Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat, told the Observer. Through theseperpetual disaster declarations, “Texas has become a pay-to-play [state] if you want these big government contracts because we don’t have fair bidding requirements. Now we see these political donors getting rich off taxpayer money with no accountability. Abbott acts as if he’s king, and he’s rewarding his patrons.”
Below, the Observer has identified the largest of the private contractors on the receiving end of the Operation Lone Star windfall, including some who’ve become Abbott’s campaign “patrons.”
Gothams LLC
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a California venture capitalist named Matt Michelsen moved to Austin with a new disaster response company he’d founded called Gothams LLC. His firm quickly got into state contracting, selling TDEM hundreds of millions of dollars worth of COVID-19 tests, which the Food and Drug Administration later flagged for producing false negative results. Gothams was later paid millions more to run several antibody infusion centers around the state.
As Operation Lone Star really ramped up in early 2022, the state opened a new facility (its second such center) to process migrants who’d been charged with criminal trespassing as part of Abbott’s catch-and-jail dragnet. TDEM handed Gothams a $43 million emergency purchase order to build and operate the facility, a temporary tent structure in Jim Hogg County, about 50 miles southeast of Laredo.
Gothams was selected through an informal bidding process in which TDEM solicited proposals from several firms; only Gothams “met the full requirements of the bid,” according to the agency. In its proposal, Gothams said its experience with TDEM in providing rapid deployment COVID-19 resources made it a logical private partner for a migration disaster. “As Texas continues to lead the nation in upholding immigration laws, the post-arrest challenge of maintaining a vast network of jail facilities has become of even greater importance. Gothams can provide construction and operation services for TDEM’s intake facilities.”
When the facility opened that March, the number of migrants arrested in Jim Hogg for criminal trespassing and processed through the new facility briefly surged, but tapered off by the fall. As of this January, about 1,600 detainees had been processed there, according to daily counts the Observer obtained under Texas open records law. Most days, the OLS center received fewer than 10 migrants, if it received any at all.
Over time, Gothams became one of the largest private contractors working on Operation Lone Star—and the most politically connected.
Last February, Abbott convened an event at a public park along the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass that he had commandeered as part of an escalating standoff with the Biden administration. Shelby Park had been turned into a militarized movie set staged for maximum visual impact, with lines of Humvees and fully equipped soldiers touting automatic rifles providing optimal backdrops for Republican photo ops.
Among the private planes that lined the tarmac of the small international airport outside Eagle Pass that day, one stood out among the standard Learjets and Cessnas. A brand new $10-million Pilatus corporate jet with a custom matte gray paint job and a logo branded on the twin engines announcing its owner to the world: Gothams.
The jet’s VIP passenger, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, had landed about 10 miles away from a planned press conference location, where he’d appear at Abbott’s invitation with an entourage of a dozen other Republican governors, many of whom (Lee included) have lent their own troops and police to OLS.
Gothams’ jet on the runway at Austin-Bergstrom Airport in September 2023 (Seth the Spotter)
Gothams’ private jet had reportedly ferried Tennessee’s top executive from Nashville to the border, and later back again, as a courtesy to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), of which Lee had just recently been made chairman. Abbott, a former RGA chair himself, had received $4 million from the group’s PAC in November 2022.
Overall, Gothams provided the RGA with in-kind travel worth around $30,000 on several dates between 2022 and 2024, according to the RGA’s IRS filings—including on an additional date when Abbott hosted GOP governors for a border security briefing in Austin in May 2023.
It’s not clear whether Abbott has flown on the Gothams jet, nor whether he had any involvement connecting the firm with RGA. IRS records show that since 2022, Michelsen and Gothams have also contributed a combined $150,000 to the RGA.
In December, Michelsen made a $250,000 contribution to Abbott’s campaign. It was his largest single check since he first began donating to the Texas governor in the summer of 2022, and it brought his total level of support to $600,000—not including another $100,000 to a PAC supporting Texas Republican legislators. Gothams was also a “Silver Sponsor” of the governor’s 2023 inauguration ceremony; the firm’s $25,000 donation earned tickets including an exclusive VIP event.
Gothams’ close gubernatorial ties aren’t limited to political patronage either. Abbott’s longtime advisor and deputy chief of staff, Jordan Hale, went to work for Gothams as its general counsel in July 2023.
The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story, and neither did Gothams or Michelsen.
TDEM has paid Gothams at least $65 million since 2022 for services related to Operation Lone Star. In August 2024, TDEM extended the firm’s contract to operate the Jim Hogg processing center for another year, at a monthly cost of $2.2 million.
Recana Solutions
In July 2021, the state opened its first migrant processing center next to the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office in Del Rio—a border town upriver of Eagle Pass where thousands of migrants were crossing at the time.
TDEM issued an emergency purchase order to a Texas staffing company called Recana Solutions to provide certified jailers and other staff to run the facility—at a cost of about $1.4 million per month—where migrants would be processed, remotely magistrated by a judge, then transferred to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice state jail.
Since then, Recana has taken on an outsized role in the state’s catch-and-jail system—similar to GEO Group and CoreCivic, which run private immigrant detention centers for the federal government—as the firm maintains personal information for each of the thousands of migrants who have been processed while coordinating with DPS, local sheriffs, public defenders, and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“For Operation Lone Star, Recana essentially serves as the sheriff’s office for over 10 counties,” said Amrutha Jindal, executive director of Lone Star Defenders, which provides public defenders for migrants under OLS. “From conducting booking and intake for arrested individuals to overseeing their release from custody upon completion of the case or posting of bail, Recana occupies a critical role that is usually reserved for elected county officials and their employees.”
Recana has been paid nearly $50 million as of January, according to state comptroller records, and its TDEM contract to run the Val Verde facility was extended through 2025.
While it’s not clear from publicly available purchase order records, Jindal said that Recana also appears to be providing jailer staffing at the Jim Hogg processing center, which is located in the county seat of Hebbronville. (TDEM did not answer an Observer question about this.) Online job listings show the company has set up a hiring office in town and, per the county judge’s Facebook page, it has been a frequent sponsor of community functions—such as a Thanksgiving bingo luncheon at the local senior center and a back-to-school event for kids.
More than 15,000 migrants have been processed through the two centers under Operation Lone Star, mostly on charges of criminal trespassing or human smuggling, according to figures provided by the Texas Office of Court Administration. Those numbers have slowed to a trickle in recent months—around 1,000 migrants have been processed through the Val Verde center and just over 100 migrants through the Jim Hogg facility between August and mid-January, records show. Initial legislative budget proposals include funding, coming from the governor’s office, to continue processing center operations for the next two years.
The OLS Zone (Clay Rodery)
Like Gothams, Recana has also become a major patron of Abbott and his Republican allies since becoming a top OLS contractor. In 2024, Adam Stiles, the company president, donated $100,000 to Abbott and $100,000 to the Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC, a group that’s recently run afoul of some Republican leaders but remains GOP-aligned. Recana also donated in its own name $100,000 apiece to the RGA and the Republican-allied Judicial Fairness PAC last year.
Stiles has also donated tens of thousands of dollars to GOP elected officials with oversight of Operation Lone Star—including $25,000 to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and over $50,000 to political committees for South Texas Republican Representative Ryan Guillen, who chaired the Texas House homeland security committee last session.
David Donatti, a senior attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said it’s “astonishing” how private contractors like Recana and Gothams—which have a clear self-interest in keeping the OLS machine at full speed—have become major donors to Abbott.
“One thing that is abundantly clear is that border enforcement, and in particular the construction of detention facilities and a criminal legal system built exclusively around arresting, detaining, and sometimes (but very infrequently) prosecuting people for migration is big business. It’s a huge business,” Donatti told the Observer. “It’s incredibly lucrative for a very small number of people who have every incentive to make this system as big and as bloated as possible.”
Recana and Stiles did not respond to Observer requests for comment.
Recana is the only private defendant in a pending lawsuit the ACLU filed last year against two border sheriffs, state prison wardens, and the private contractor for allegedly detaining four migrants who had been apprehended under the OLS catch-and-jail operation for weeks after their charges were dropped or sentences served.
With its high-profile work on OLS, Recana is also working to get a foot in the door with local sheriffs. In December, the firm sponsored the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas conference under the name Recana Security Consulting & Management. (The company uses numerous variations of the Recana name.) Stiles and other Recana employees donated $12,000 to the 2024 campaign of Urbino Martinez, the sheriff of Brooks County, which neighbors Jim Hogg. Last year, the company also won a $1.2 million contract from Liberty County, near Houston, for jail staffing.
Wynne Transportation
In April 2022, when Abbott first announced his plans to bus migrants from Texas border towns like Del Rio and Eagle Pass to “sanctuary” cities like New York and Washington, D.C., he predicted that a flood of donations from people across the country “likely will mean it will be no cost to the State of Texas for providing these buses.”
In fact, Texas received just around half a million dollars in donations to fund the program. Texas taxpayers, meanwhile, were left to pick up what turned out to be a hefty tab of about $220 million. Over two-plus years, the state sent roughly 2,000 buses carrying nearly 120,000 migrants to a handful of major American cities—at a cost of roughly $1,800 per person. That compares to a couple hundred bucks for a similar Greyhound bus ride.
The busing operation became a huge political success for Abbott on the national stage. But he wasn’t the only winner. Wynne Transportation, a Dallas charter bus company that the state contracted to bus migrants out of state, received $120 million, according to TDEM records.
The company was founded by members of the Wynne family, whose various scions have built fortunes in oil, real estate, and ranching, on top of co-founding Six Flags, the Dallas Cowboys, and a prestigious white-shoe law firm. Bedford Wynne Jr. took over the bus company in 2019 from his mother, Joan Wynne, in partnership with a Massachusetts private equity firm that owns most of the business. The Observer did not find any campaign contributions made by individuals involved with the company.
But the Wynnes appear to be staunch supporters of the cause. After one angry commenter accused the company of human trafficking in a post on its Facebook page, Joan Wynne replied: “Someone has to do it to secure our border and stop the flow of Fentanyl. …The migrants are bringing in diseases and terrorism.”
The high cost of Wynne’s bus services stems partly from the state requiring Wynne to provide security guards on each trip, which the contractor billed at a rate of $125 an hour, accounting for a large share of the cost. (Wynne subcontracted a security firm called Mayhem Solutions Group, which has ties to right-wing border vigilantes, reportedly paying the company at least $20 million for its services.)
One security guard hired by Mayhem called the conditions on the bus “disgusting and inhuman,” in an interview with ABC News. “This job, from day one, was never meant to be done the right way. The job meant from day one … just to get people on a bus and out of Texas. That’s it,” the guard said. “They didn’t care about their health. They didn’t care about where they were going. Most of the time they were lied to.”
(Clay Rodery)
As border crossings plummeted in 2024, Texas quietly wound down its busing operation. Abbott kept boasting about the program, including during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July, pledging that “Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.” The last bus was sent out from El Paso to New York City on June 26, with 50 migrants on board, according to TDEM records.
Yet, the state paid Wynne over $6 million between last July and this January, despite not having bused a single migrant, according to TDEM records.
Back in 2020, Wynne had won a competitively bid four-year contract issued by the state comptroller’s office to provide buses for emergency evacuation events and had an agreement to provide services in partnership with a Houston logistics company called Getz Transport Solutions. In early 2022, TDEM tapped Wynne to run the migrant busing operation under that existing contract.
The partnership with Getz eventually soured over a dispute about their profit-sharing agreement, and Wynne terminated the company as its partner. Getz took its case to arbitration claiming Wynne had made $70 million in profits from the lucrative migrant busing contract but refused to pay Getz its share. (A Wynne spokesperson told the Observer that figure is “wildly inaccurate.”)
Much of that dispute centered on the ad hoc nature of TDEM’s contracting process under Abbott’s border disaster declaration. Wynne claimed its services for the migrant busing were part of an informal verbal agreement with TDEM and that, for the first several months, the company was paid for busing migrants via a credit card owned by an unknown private individual. According to court records, Wynne testified that TDEM audited only a small portion of its $200 million invoices.
Last summer, the arbitrator dismissed Wynne’s claims as a “disingenuous narrative” and ordered the bus company to pay $33 million to Getz, a decision subsequently upheld by a Harris County judge. Getz later filed a still-pending suit in the recently formed Dallas business court claiming Wynne was improperly transferring millions of dollars to its owners in an attempt to avoid paying what Getz was owed, which Wynne has denied. In January, Wynne filed for bankruptcy in federal court.
The Wynne spokesperson told the Observer that its contract with the state expired at the end of 2024 and it no longer had any active contract. Yet TDEM previously issued purchase orders that could pay Wynne and other busing contractors through 2025, and, in December, the state comptroller notified Wynne that it was unilaterally extending its busing contract.
Wynne’s CEO responded to the state with a memo saying the company was “unable to perform the work,” according to emails the Observer obtained through an open records request. A comptroller contract manager responded that the agency was bidding out a new busing contract that it would transition to in early 2025. “Until further notice, Wynne remains under contract. [The comptroller] expects Wynne to perform contract services if and when ordered by TDEM. Refusal to perform in a disaster situation, including the border disaster declared by the Governor, will be treated seriously by the State,” the email stated.
In response to questions from the Observer, TDEM said that it follows all state procurement laws and its contract approach with Wynne “streamlined procurement, optimized resources, and ensured operational needs were met to respond to the Governor’s ongoing border disaster declaration.”
TDEM also said the agency carries out regular internal and external audits. “This ‘belt and suspenders’ approach ensures responsible spending and operational efficiency in the state’s emergency response efforts,” TDEM stated.
Team Housing Solutions
In the past four years, thousands of National Guard soldiers have been deployed along the Texas border—to outposts from El Paso to Del Rio, Eagle Pass to Laredo, and down to the Rio Grande Valley.
Those soldiers have had to sleep somewhere. For much of the Operation Lone Star mission, that was in cramped conditions in temporary trailer barracks or in hotels and motels. TMD has spent huge sums of money on those accommodations. A New Braunfels private contractor called Team Housing Solutions has played the biggest role, receiving over $825 million in no-bid purchase orders from TMD to provide various sorts of shelter—from converted RVs and makeshift camps to, more recently, a permanent base with all of the amenities.
Last February, Abbott announced that TMD was building a permanent military installation on the outskirts of Eagle Pass to serve as the main base for OLS military operations. TMD turned to Team Housing to build the sprawling facility over the coming months—with an ultimate capacity to house 1,800 soldiers, including a 24/7 dining hall, fully equipped gym, and recreation center with video games and big screen TVs, plus helipads, motor pools, and executive offices for command leadership.
(Courtesy / Governor’s Office)
Perhaps more than anything, Abbott’s announcement signaled his intention for OLS to become a permanent military presence on the border. The base alone came with a huge cost—up to $500 million to keep it running over the next few years, according to contract records. TMD gave the project to Team Housing without competitive bidding, records show.
TMD has similarly paid other contractors, like Storm Services LLC, over $750 million to build and maintain temporary base camps for Operation Lone Star, contract records show.
Team Housing, which referred the Observer’s questions to TMD, has heavily promoted its work on the Eagle Pass base camp, touting its rapid turnaround and construction—including in a nearly 8-minute YouTube infomercial that opens with dramatic news footage of migrants swarming the border, before pivoting to Abbott’s announcement of his plans for the new military installation and employee commentary on the importance of the project.
TMD did not answer Observer questions for this story by press time.
Various Toys & Gadgets
Operation Lone Star has empowered DPS with unprecedented levels of law enforcement power, funding, and resources.
The state police agency has had a free hand to spend tens of millions of dollars on a wishlist of expensive police toys—from surveillance software that tracks people’s social media to drones, riot gear, pepper ball launchers, souped-up boats, ATVs, armored vehicles, helicopters, tactical gear, weapons, scopes, night-vision goggles, and ammo—lots of ammo. Plus: a couple of horses (and horse trailers), several K9s, training equipment, shelters, amphibious tactical vests, and more than $50 million on Airbus helicopters and airplanes—fitted with all the high-end technology. And 100 new Chevy Tahoes.
All these transactions, needless to say, have a happy vendor on the other end.
In addition to the gadgets and toys, DPS has also used OLS to acquire the next generation of high-tech AI surveillance software through emergency no-bid contracts, under the rationale that what is essentially warrantless wiretapping is critical to rooting out organized criminal activity at the border. (While some Republican legislators have raised concerns about civil liberties in response to news of a specific surveillance software DPS acquired, they’ve yet to carry out any sort of legislative oversight as of press time.)
In a statement, DPS spokesperson Sheridan Nolen said the agency is “committed to ensuring that all purchases are necessary, fair, and align with the department’s mission to protect and serve.”
Nolen said that, even under an emergency declaration, the agency uses “normal procurement processes when time permits,” adding: “While the disaster declaration allows for expedited purchases, DPS follows best practices to avoid waste, abuse, and unfair advantage.”
A project of OLS’ scope operates on multiple levels. Abbott’s sprawling initiative has meted out real harm on the migrants caught in its carceral dragnet, and it has subjected residents of the Texas borderlands to further militarization of their home. It is also, as liberal critics like to point out, a massive case of political theater: It isn’t happenstance that all the brand new police choppers and tactical assault vehicles and ATVs always find themselves, bright and sparkling clean, in the backdrop of the latest Abbott border press conference.
But Operation Lone Star is more than just show business. The massive escalation of Texas’ border militarization over the past few years has become big business.
Governor Greg Abbott at a Thanksgiving-themed event for press and Operation Lone Star service members (Francesca D’Annunzio/Texas Observer)
There is now a powerful, well-heeled constituency that has built up around this permanent border disaster—one that has a stated self-interest in perpetuating this security state. So it’s no surprise that, even though Abbott, Dan Patrick, and other top Republicans briefly feigned interest in substantial OLS spending reductions after Trump’s election, the budget proposals for the coming biennium maintain the spendthrift status quo.
Much like how members of Congress with military bases and weapons manufacturers in their districts become vigorous defenders of peacetime military spending, the governor has erected a state-funded mini-economy invested in its own self-perpetuation.
Even as border theatrics partly transition to the federal realm under Trump, Abbott and Texas are primed to play a key role in helping facilitate the president’s agenda, as are the private contractors who have thrived under Operation Lone Star.
Compared to the assortment of Texas titans, moguls, and barons from oil and gas, real estate, finance, casino gaming, and other sundry sectors who heap millions and millions of dollars upon their good ol’ boy governor, the amount of money flowing in from OLS contractors like Gothams and Recana may be relatively paltry—so far. But, as Abbott and other state leaders have proven in the last few years, border security is a growth industry—one propped up by insatiable political appetites, opportunistic vultures, and blank checks.
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