Texas could implement a plan to bus migrants directly to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an effort to get them processed for deportation, according to media reports. 

The move would be a departure from the state’s program, part of Operation Lone Star, that has bussed thousands of migrants to sanctuary cities, a source told the New York Post. It has yet to be approved by Gov. Greg Abbott. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to Abbott’s office and ICE. 

“We are always going to be involved in border security so long as we’re a border state,” a Texas government source told the newspaper. “We spent a lot of taxpayer money to have the level of deterrent that we have on the border, and we can’t just walk away.”

TRUMP SAYS MEXICO WILL STOP FLOW OF MIGRANTS AFTER SPEAKING WITH MEXICAN PRESIDENT FOLLOWING TARIFF THREATS

Abbott has been especially aggressive in combating illegal immigration, bussing migrants to blue cities in an effort to bring attention to the border crisis. Under the proposed plan, buses chartered by Texas from border cities will be taken to federal detention centers to help ICE agents process migrants quickly, the Post reported.

Texas has been in a legal fight with the Biden administration over its efforts to curb illegal immigration. On Wednesday, an appeals court ruled that the state has the right to build a razor wire border wall to deter migrants. 

Officials have also offered land to the incoming Trump administration to build deportation centers to hold illegal immigrant criminals.

LIBERAL NANTUCKET REELS FROM MIGRANT CRIME WAVE AS BIDEN SPENDS THANKSGIVING IN RICH FRIEND’S MANSION

“My office has identified several of our properties and is standing by ready to make this happen on Day One of the Trump presidency,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said during a visit to the border Tuesday.

Authorities have also warned of unaccompanied migrant children being caught near the border. On Thursday, a 10-year-old boy from El Salvador told state troopers in Maverick County, Texas, that he had been lost and left behind by a human smuggler. 

The boy was holding a cellphone and crying, Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez posted on X. The child said his parents were in the U.S. 

APPEALS COURT RULES TEXAS HAS RIGHT TO BUILD RAZOR WIRE BORDER WALL TO DETER ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: ‘HUGE WIN’

On Sunday, troopers encountered an unaccompanied 2-year-old girl from El Salvador holding a piece of paper with a phone number and her name. She told authorities that her parents were also in the U.S. 

That morning, state troopers also encountered a group of 211 illegal immigrants in Maverick County. Among the group were 60 unaccompanied children, ages 2 to 17, and six special interest immigrants from Mali and Angola. 

“Regardless of political views, it is unacceptable for any child to be exposed to dangerous criminal trafficking networks,” Olivarez wrote at the time. “With a record number of unaccompanied children and hundreds of thousands missing, there is no one ensuring the safety & security of these children except for the men & women who are on the frontlines daily.”

He noted that the “reality is that many children are exploited & trafficked, never to be heard from again.” 

President Biden on Thanksgiving said he was thankful that the transition of power to a second Trump administration has gone smoothly, while urging the incoming commander-in-chief to “rethink” threats to impose steep tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods. 

“I hope that [President-elect Trump] rethinks it. I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden told reporters Thursday on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he was spending the holiday with family. “We’re surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Oceans and two allies — Mexico and Canada. The last thing we need to do is begin to screw up those relationships. I think that we got them in a good place.”

Earlier this week, Trump vowed to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada in an effort to get both nations to do more to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs into the U.S. Trump spoke with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo on Wednesday, and both apparently came to an understanding, he said. 

CHINA FREES US PASTOR AFTER NEARLY 20 YEARS OF WRONGFUL DETAINMENT

“She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We also talked about what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States, and also, U.S. consumption of these drugs. It was a very productive conversation!”

Trump also threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on China. Biden said Chinese President Xi Jinping “doesn’t want to make a mistake.”

“I am not saying he is our best buddy, but he understands what’s at stake,” he said. 

DONALD TRUMP CALLS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES TO APOLOGIZE FOR ‘GETTING YEARS OF TRUMP COVERAGE WRONG’

President Biden talks to the media during a visit to a Nantucket fire station on Thanksgiving in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Thursday. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

President Biden also said Thursday that illegal border crossings have been “down considerably” since Trump’s first term in office. Trump heavily campaigned on the border crisis that exploded after Biden took office. 

The president also said he was pleased with the cease-fire deal between Israel and Lebanon and that he was “very, very happy” about China releasing three Americans who were “wrongfully detained” for several years. 

Regarding the transition from his presidency to a second Trump administration, Biden said he wants the process to occur without any hiccups.  

President Biden talks to the media in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Thursday. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

“I want to make sure it goes smoothly. And all the talk about what he is going to do and not do, I think that maybe it is a little bit of internal reckoning on his part,” he said. 

A coping mechanism I’ve adopted since the election of Donald Trump, a man more deserving of prison than the presidency, is to look for reasons for even the slightest optimism about the nation’s governance over the next four years. To that end, this Thanksgiving I’m grateful for the Republican “Grim Reaper,” Mitch McConnell.

Really.

Yes, I’m saying I’m thankful for the sour senator from Kentucky who’s built a turkey of a legacy: Fighting for years, up to a conservative Supreme Court, to successfully decapitate limits on campaign contributions from corporations and special interests. Stuffing that court and lower benches with far-right jurists. Finally, engineering Trump’s Senate acquittal after the House impeached him for inciting an insurrection that trashed the Capitol McConnell professes to revere.

It’s because of that last McConnell “achievement” that we face Trump 2.0. Had the Senate convicted Trump in February 2021, it probably would have followed with a vote to bar him from running for office again, as the Senate has for impeached and convicted judges.

So here we are, and McConnell too.

At 82, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history is voluntarily surrendering his crown to mentee Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. He will serve the last two years of his seventh and perhaps final term among the rank and file of the Republican majority. It’s McConnell’s just deserts to take a demotion as Trump returns to the summit: For all of McConnell’s past services to the once and future president, since Jan. 6 the two men have loathed each other more than I loathe marshmallows on sweet potatoes.

Familiar as he is with power, McConnell is well aware of who holds it now. Still, he won’t be without clout in Trump’s Washington. He won’t retreat to the backbenches or bend the knee. He even relishes the schoolyard nickname Trump gave him — “Old Crow” — doling out bottles of the Kentucky bourbon with his mug on the label.

McConnell may be stooped with age, but he’s suggesting publicly and privately that he’ll rise to the occasion as leader of a Republican resistance in the Senate, providing cover to others, should Trump overreach. The president-elect already has done so with some grotesque Cabinet choices, preceded by his anticonstitutional demand that senators forfeit their “advice and consent” power and instead be rubber stamps. McConnell’s nearly immediate response amounted to “No way.”

If Trump, as president, carries through on his threat to illegally impound funds that Congress approves, expect McConnell to cry foul, and even back a court challenge. Most of all, look for McConnell — who will chair the defense spending subcommittee — to stand for continued U.S. leadership in the world, especially in support of Ukraine and NATO. That posture will surely ruffle the feathers of an “America First” president enamored of dictators and disdainful of allies.

“Opposition to Ukraine is about as much nonsense as [saying] Biden wasn’t legitimately elected,” McConnell says in a bite at Trump in a new biography, “The Price of Power.”

I’m not naive. McConnell will go along with many Trump actions, including serving up a bounty of unaffordable new tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, urging Americans to gorge on fossil fuels and, again, stuffing the courts with right-wing ideologues.

Yet recall the ancient proverb: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

As ruthless and rule-bending as McConnell has been on judicial confirmations and more, I’m betting he’ll respect institutional and constitutional lines that Trump scornfully crosses, and recruit a few other Republican senators to help hold those lines. A few Republicans are all that’s needed when the party’s majority is a narrow 53 to 47; Trump can lose just four votes if Democrats are united in opposition. I count up to a dozen Republicans who could take turns to buck Trump occasionally, which would dilute the political pain of Trump’s wrath.

On Trump’s nominations, for instance. Ex-con Stephen K. Bannon, among other MAGA militants, blamed McConnell (“You gotta give the devil its due”) for whipping up opposition that forced the unsavory former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida off the menu as Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Publicly, too, McConnell was no chicken, as he countered Trump’s call to let nominees slide through as recess appointments.

“Each of these nominees needs to come before the Senate and go through the process and be vetted,” McConnell said two weeks ago. The institutionalist in him knows that, under the Constitution, the Senate’s power to confirm nominees is equal to a president’s in naming them.

Among those he could help defeat are Trump’s worst picks: Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the candidates to head intelligence, defense and health, respectively. A polio survivor, McConnell surely chokes on Kennedy’s anti-vax rhetoric. Likewise for Gabbard’s and Hegseth’s echoes of Trump’s skepticism and Vladimir Putin’s talking points on Ukraine.

McConnell has little to lose. He’ll be liberated in the new Congress, he told his biographer, Michael Tackett, no longer required as party leader to attend to the appetites of moderate and MAGA Republicans alike. He’s not expected to seek reelection in 2026. Sure, he’s unpopular nationally, in both parties. But inside the Senate, most Republicans respect and even like him. His outsized standing there will parallel that of former House Speaker and GOAT Nancy Pelosi, whom he praised last month: “I think Pelosi has done a pretty good job as a former speaker, still being able to express herself and have an audience.”

Similarly, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina predicted of McConnell, “When he speaks, people will listen.”

Forget the turkey. I’m bringing the popcorn. And rooting for the Old Crow.

@jackiekcalmes