Texas Governor Greg Abbott called on Congress on Thursday to compensate the state for Operation Lone Star, a border security operation.

He wrote to the leaders of the United States House and Senate, as well as the entire Texas congressional delegation, seeking that the federal government refund Texas for the more than $11.1 billion spent on border security measures paid for by Texas taxpayers under the Biden administration.

Texas allocated more than $11.6 billion to border security efforts over a four-year period, the most in the state’s history, under the Biden administration. It totals more than multiple state fiscal year budgets and more than what the Trump administration allocated to federal border security efforts in Texas, The Center Square reported.

This year, Texas Senate and House budget proposals allocate more than $6 billion to border security efforts over a two-year period, The Center Square reported.

As Congress appropriated billions of dollars to secure other countries’ borders, and Democratic governors and mayors urged the Biden administration to provide financial assistance to deal with an influx of illegal foreign nationals, Texas taxpayers funded Operation Lone Star entirely, with no reimbursement from the federal government. “Even though the federal government has a duty to secure our nation’s borders, from day one former President Joe Biden refused to enforce federal immigration law and pursued reckless open-border policies that invited record-breaking illegal immigration,” Abbott disclosed.

Abbott cites the administration’s “reckless open-border policies,” which include halting border wall and barrier construction, releasing illegal border crossers into the country through mass parole programs, loosening asylum standards, dismissing removal proceedings, and eliminating critical vetting requirements, among others. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump used various executive orders to terminate and rescind these policies, according to The Center Square. “President Biden’s policies have left Texas and the rest of America vulnerable to unprecedented infiltration by violent criminals, known terrorists, and other hostile foreign actors, such as the dangerous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.” Weapons and lethal substances like fentanyl streamed into our country; women and children were abducted, raped, and murdered in Texas; and property was devastated throughout the southern border,” Abbott said.

Since the launch of OLS in March 2021, OLS officers have apprehended over 530,000 illegal border crossers, repelled over 140,000 attempted illegal entries, made over 50,000 criminal arrests, with more than 43,000 felony charges reported, and seized enough lethal doses of fentanyl to kill everyone in the United States, Mexico, and Canada combined. Texas has also built more than 240 miles of border barriers and the lone National Guard base along the border with Mexico. According to The Center Square, after Texas’ first Border Czar Mike Banks enhanced OLS activities, federal border apprehensions in Texas decreased by 51% in a year.

The state’s achievement “came at a cost, which fell squarely on the shoulders of Texas taxpayers but should have been the federal government’s responsibility,” Abbott told reporters. The cost to Texas taxpayers to build 100 miles of border wall and install maritime buoy barriers exceeded $3 billion. It cost $58 million to install and fortify 200 kilometers of concertina wire barriers. The deployment of over 10,000 Texas National Guard troops and a surge of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to the border region cost approximately $6 billion. Abbott’s letter formally requests that Congress compensate Texas for these costs in full. “The burden that our state has carried is a direct result of the federal government’s reluctance to do its duty. Texas’s work under Operation Lone Star has protected and will continue to benefit the entire country,” Abbott said.

His formal request follows a proposal made last year by U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican from north Texas. According to The Center Square, Williams’ Operation Lone Star Reimbursement Act would require the federal government to reimburse Texas for OLS costs totaling more than $8 billion at the time.