Oh, give me a break. While it's good that the major focus has been & remains on the underaged rape victims (again, basic legal lesson #1 for ...underage minor girls cannot consent to either sex with adults or marriage...and 15 & under is "underage" in Texas). Basic legal lesson #2, and folks should dust off their history books: All kinds of men did jail time in Utah in the 1880s for polygamy--whether they were marrying 14 & 15 yo or whether they were marrying women in their 30s or 40s. Polygamy was illegal in the 19th century, the 20th century, and the 21st century. Therefore, if Texas wants to follow up on that angle as the evidence is already present, there is just cause to start (soon) arresting a good chunk of the men present.
The fact is that it's because of Mormon laxity--with Mormons who serve as law enforcement folks in Utah--that this problem is multiplied across the borders into other states. They, along w/AZ authorities, would rather continue to pay up welfare fraud than risk a PR re-enactment of the Short Creek raid of '53.
I think you hit the nail on the head, referring to the large number of law enforcement and government officials who are Mormons themselves in some of those communities where polygamy has been ongoing for a number of generations.
I suspect for a number of years a policy of live and let live had been accepted in those communities.
Every 5-10 years some outside authority has to step in to enforce the law to keep it in check.
The way I understand it, there is one older geezer in the LDS heirarchy today who isn’t accepting the live and let live philosophy and felt the FLDS groups were giving the rest of LDS a bad name, so wanted to see them disbanded.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more powerful folks in the LDS community pushing this effort to clamp down on polygamy after Mitt Romney attracted attention to LDS recently.