Texas National Guardsmen set up a secret spying mission by using WhatsApp to snoop on migrants, a watchdog found.
Top brass in Operation Lone Star — a state-run effort to combat illegal immigration — "wanted to pretend it was like Iraq," one servicemember told The Texas Tribune and The Military Times.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent National Guardsmen to the border to stop migrants from crossing into the US.
Texas servicemembers working on Gov. Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star secretly infiltrated invite-only WhatsApp groups to snoop on migrants and monitor their movements, The Texas Tribune and The Military Times reported — a spying operation that violated rules prohibiting state-run intelligence agencies.
According to Tuesday's joint report in The Tribune and The Military Times, leaders in Operation Lone Star treated it like the army and demanded military-level intelligence from officers who weren't prepared — and likely didn't have the authority — to provide it.
"Everyone [in charge] wanted to pretend it was like Iraq in 2003," one servicemember told The Tribune and The Military Times. "They wanted to do Army stuff, even though this is [legally] not Army stuff."
Insider has reached out to the Texas National Guard for comment.
Operation Lone Star is Texas' state-run operation aimed at stopping illegal immigration and smuggling.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched the program in 2021 in response to a historic surge in migrants crossing the US's southern border. The...
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