Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday called on the Texas legislature to impose stricter oversight and deny additional funds to the Texas Military Department (TMD), which oversees Texas’s National Guard (TNG) forces. This follows reports of TNG troops firing pepper-spray projectiles, commonly known as “pepper-ball,” against migrants at the US-Mexico border as part of Operation Lone Star.

Bob Libal, HRW’s Texas consultant, noted multiple incidents where witnesses reported TNG units fired pepper-balls at migrants who “posed no risk to national guard members or anyone else.” Libal urged the legislature to “respond by increasing its oversight over the Texas Military Department and denying funding increases to the department until these abuses stop.”

During a Texas Senate Border Security Committee meeting in June, TMD adjunct general Thomas Suelzer claimed that “people crossing are becoming more violent,” suggesting that cartels may have issued threats to kill migrants who return from the border. Suelzer outlined the escalation of force used by TNG forces at the border, claiming that “force may be used for self-defense or defense of others,” but that the force used must be the minimum level prescribed by and proportional to the situation. He said that pepper-balls are used to saturate an area near barriers approached by migrants with dispersed irritant clouds to deter crossing, claiming that TMD troops are trained not to “shoot directly at the individual,” which he noted could cause serious bodily harm.

However, witnesses and migrants interviewed by HRW have contradicted these claims, reporting incidents where migrants were directly targeted by pepper-ball rounds, including one case where a man was struck by a projectile. The Washington Office on Latin America has also documented the use of other less-than-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, and physical force including beatings and pushing people into concertina (razor) wire by Texas law enforcement and TNG forces.

The UN’s Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials requires that the use of force by law enforcement, including military forces acting in such capacities, be necessary and proportional. The UN Human Rights Office further states that chemical irritants should only be used when there is an imminent threat of injury.

Texas launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 under Governor Greg Abbott to “detect and repel illegal crossings, arrest human smugglers and cartel gang members, and stop the flow of deadly drugs like fentanyl.” He claimed that the measure was necessary due to President Biden’s “reckless open border policies,” which he says created an illegal immigration and drug crisis in Texas that the federal government is ignoring.

Since its launch, Operation Lone Star has come under extensive scrutiny for bringing an extensive military presence to the US-Mexico border and for contributing to a number of deaths and injuries along the border. One reported incident involved TNG allegedly preventing US Customs and Border Patrol from assisting a migrant mother and her children who drowned on the US side of the border.

In response to increasing illegal border crossings, President Joe Biden signed an executive order in June barring individuals crossing the border unlawfully from receiving asylum. This move has sparked a lawsuit from advocacy groups who argue that the order violates both US immigration law and the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning asylum seekers to countries where they face harm.