Ammon Blair, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former Army service member and Border Patrol agent with over 30 years of combined federal service, testifies before the Texas House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety and Veterans Affairs on foreign adversary influence and transparency enforcement.
Blair argues that Texas law enforcement lacks the intelligence tools and data access, such as Palantir-style link analysis capabilities, needed to map and act on threats from cartels, the Chinese Communist Party, and Islamist organizations. He says a majority of local law enforcement agencies are not meaningfully integrated into the state’s Homeland Security Task Force despite reporting otherwise, and describes Operation Lone Star Task Force’s recent engagement with the Department of War over information sharing gaps.
Blair states he is drafting legislation for the next session that builds on TPPF’s proposed “Engel list” and expands on House Bill 45 from the prior session, and references a Nebraska bill as a possible model for Texas. He also says that roughly 95 percent of intelligence reaching task force agencies through the Texas Fusion Center is not actionable, and describes barriers Texas DPS and local agencies face in accessing federal identity-verification systems even under 287(g) agreements.