Is Texas unprotected, or just empty?

This infographic comes from the “ProtectOurTexasBorder.com” website maintained by the Texas State Department of Agriculture. The Department’s commissioner, Todd Staples (R), is an outspoken critic (PDF) of the Obama administration’s perceived neglect of border security.

The graphic contends that Texas is being given short shrift by the U.S. Border Patrol. While the other three border states have about 14 Border Patrol agents per mile, there are only 6 agents per mile in Texas.

The facts:

This sounds like a serious disparity — until you consider how sparsely populated Texas’ border zones are. Especially in west Texas — the vast, arid, inhospitable El Paso, Big Bend, and Del Rio sectors — population centers are so distant that cross-border migration, as measured by apprehension statistics (PDF), is a relative trickle.

Add up the populations of all four states’ border counties — easy to do using the Census Department’s website — and you’ll find that while Texas includes 64% of the U.S.-Mexico border, it only includes 34% of the population of all border counties (in 2011, 2.5 million out of a total of 4.9 million people). San Diego County, California and Pima County, Arizona, both have more people than the largest Texas border county (which is El Paso).

When you look at Border Patrol agents per border-county resident, Texas is actually gets more thorough coverage than the rest of the border. Texas border counties have 3.2 Border Patrol agents for each 1,000 residents. The other states’ border counties have 2.1 Border Patrol agents for each 1,000 residents.

The agents-per-mile statistic, on its own, tells us more about how empty Texas’ borderlands are than it tells us about border security policy.

By Adam Isacson