Car chases by Texas police near border have led to 74 deaths in two years, report says

AUSTIN — High-speed car chases by Texas police officers resulting in deaths near the U.S.-Mexico border have sharply increased in the more than two years that Gov. Greg Abbott launched a multi-billion dollar border security operation, according to a report published Monday by the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

At least 74 people have died and 189 have been injured over a 29-month period, the report said. Some of those killed have been bystanders, according to the organization, which investigates allegations of human rights’ abuses around the world.

“Public safety doesn’t require careening around Texas roadways or crashing into Texans’ cars and homes,” Alison Parker, the deputy U.S. director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Texas’ Operation Lone Star is maximizing chaos, fear, and human rights abuses against Texans and migrants, which might be a cynical way to win political points but is not a responsible way to run a government.”

When reached for comment, Ericka Miller, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of Public Safety, referred to an interview Col. Steve McCraw, the DPS director, gave to The New York Times.

The Times reported last week that law enforcement agencies across the country have changed their policies aimed at reducing the number of high-speed chases.

Not so for Texas state police and sheriff’s offices, which have retained broad discretion to give chase whenever their officers deem it appropriate, policing experts told The Times. The approach differs from several big city departments in the state, including Houston.

McCraw told the newspaper the department relies on its own troopers to decide when to start and end a pursuit. The troopers also use different tools to try to stop drivers who are fleeing from the police.

“I would argue you can certainly mitigate risk,” McCraw told The Times.

McCraw said that if a trooper did not use appropriate caution, they would be held accountable. He defended the chases because without them “all you’re doing is rewarding the Mexican cartels.”

When asked for a response on the Human Rights Watch report, Renae Eze, a spokeswoman for Abbott, blamed President Joe Biden. “President Biden’s reckless open border policies invite Mexican cartels to profit off the chaos through dangerous human trafficking and smuggling operations along the border that endanger innocent lives,” Eze said.

The report comes weeks after a head-on collision between two cars on a highway in South Texas’ Zavala County. On Nov. 8, eight people died after a car believed to be carrying migrants who were being smuggled crashed into an oncoming vehicle, according to posts on social media from DPS spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez.

Several of the passengers killed were citizens of Honduras, and two others were residents of Georgia.

Human Rights Watch analyzed data based on records requests it filed spanning from March 2021 through July 2023. Over that time, 3,600 of the more than 5,200 vehicle pursuits occurred in the 60 state counties that have participated in Abbott’s border security operation. At least seven of the pursuits led to injuries to the police officers.

The report found at least seven bystanders have been killed from the crashes. Among them: a 7-year-old girl who went to get ice cream with her grandmother. The girl and her grandmother were killed after a 22-year-old man who was accused of carrying 11 undocumented immigrants crashed into them while trying to evade deputies with the Crockett County sheriff’s department.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees border patrol, revised its policy earlier this year when it comes to vehicle chases. The new policy prohibits the high-speed chases from taking place unless there is probable cause that a felony involving violence has been committed.