The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) will resume its partnership with the City of Austin Police Department on July 2, after temporarily halting the collaboration.
The joint operation—which officials said helped improve safety, decrease traffic fatalities, and enable faster responses to calls for help in the capital city—began in March but ended in mid-May.
During that time, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked that additional DPS officers be deployed in border cities ahead of the expiration of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy. The policy allowed Border Patrol agents to turn illegal immigrants back to Mexico if they were deemed to pose a health threat amid the COVID-19 pandemic….