Texas error means National Guard troops deployed in Abbott's border mission face surprise tax payments

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's (R) state border enforcement effort has been in the news lately mostly for the busses he has chartered, at a cost to taxpayers of $14 million and counting, to send migrants to a handful of Democratic-run cities.

But that's just a small part of Abbott's $4 billion Operation Lone Star initiative.

Abbott says Operation Lone Star, a deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and state police to south Texas to arrest migrants on state charges, is necessary to augment insufficient federal border enforcement. Critics call it a cynical and wasteful election-year political stunt. Just about everybody agrees the operation has been plagued with problems.