Texas intends to lease land for Trump’s deportation plans

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said she has offered a 1,400-acre ranch on the Texas-Mexico border and intends to lease it to the Trump administration for its mass deportation plan.

Buckingham joined NewNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill” Tuesday, where she said she anticipates the state leasing the federal government the land once the Trump team “figures out what it is they want to do and what their strategic plan is.”

“What we’re anticipating is it will be a land lease. That’s how we raise money for the school children of Texas,” she said, later adding that she’s certain Texas and Trump “can come to a great agreement.”

Buckingham previously said in a November letter to President-elect Donald Trump that her office is prepared to allow deportation facilities to be built on a recently purchased ranch along the Texas-Mexico border near Rio Grande City.

She said the land commission purchased the property because the previous landowner refused to allow law enforcement activities or for a border wall to be constructed on the ranch.

Now, she says they are prepared to work with the incoming Trump administration, including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol. That includes South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who Trump has nominated to serve as Department of Homeland Security secretary, and Tom Homan, who Trump tapped to act as border czar.

“We’ll just see whatever they want the chain of command to be, and we’ll figure it out once they have their strategic plan set and we’ll get it done,” she said.

After purchasing the land in October, she predicts a mile-and-a-half of border wall will be completed "next "in about a week."

“We want our sons and daughters to be safe, and they may need our help, so we’re happy to partner with them,” Buckingham said Tuesday.

Buckingham was asked where the idea for purchasing and leasing the land came from, since her commission doesn’t typically work with immigration matters.

“We all want them out of the country. We want our sons and daughters to be safe, and they may need our help, so we’re happy to partner with them,” she said. “And once we made that first step and we knew they were interested, then we realized, well, we have lots of other properties that may be helpful as well.”

NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.

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