McALLEN, TX (KTRK) -- The Texas effort to secure the border costs you nearly a million and a half dollars -- all from the Texas budget -- every week.
When we were here in Weslaco to meet the Gov. Rick Perry and talk about it Sunday, one of the pieces we weren't able to get in to our TV portions was how he defines success. This is your money and part of our job (and his) to make sure your dollars are spent wisely.
So we asked him and this is what he told us, "What I would call success is that when you see the trains coming up or the buses coming up that they are not full of young people who have been given bad information. Clearly where there is the knowledge that you cannot come to the border of the United States, walk across and then go anywhere you want in America. That the border is secure. If you go there, that is as far as you are going to get."
Governor Perry suggested Monday that the message is not being sent clearly enough to countries in Central America that illegal border crossers will be sent home. That, he said, should be a priority of the federal effort.
The DPS effort here at the border could continue through the end of the year and by then the bill for all this would be more than $30 million.
While Perry's goal is a lofty one, we shouldn't expect it to be the only one. When he approved the spending on the border surge, Texas' Speaker of the House Joe Strauss suggested this is not a blank check for DPS and that he would hold hearings on the plan soon to make sure the money is being spent wisely.