As one small border town has been overrun by record numbers of illegal foreign nationals pouring through from Mexico, an unlikely group of sheriff’s deputies have come to their aid.
The deputies volunteered to defend the homeland at the border nearly every day, every week, for 30 months. To do so, they traveled roughly 400 miles from a county that stretches from the Houston suburbs to Galveston Island. The island and county are named after the Spanish military leader, Bernardo de Gálvez, who expressed support for the U.S. during the Revolutionary War.
Galveston Island, arguably one of the most popular destinations in Galveston County, has a long military history. Texans began serving at its port, which housed the Texas Navy during the Texas Revolution, and were stationed at Fort Travis and Fort Crockett to implement coastal defenses during World War I and II.
Men and women from Galveston County answered the call to serve at the border, led by Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset. Trochesset was the first and only sheriff in Texas, and the entire United States, to deploy deputies to the Texas-Mexico border to assist border sheriffs for 30 consecutive months. After creating the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office’s first Border Security Response Team (BSRT), more than 65 deputies volunteered to participate in more than 100 two-week deployments at the border since August 2021.
The Texas Legislature allocated funding to support efforts like the BSRT through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star. GCSO Major Ray Nolen has overseen the grant process as well as the BSRT. Their job is to “enhance interagency border security operations supporting OLS, including facilitating directed actions to deter and interdict criminal activity and detain non-citizens arrested for state crimes related to the border crisis,” he told The Center Square.
