After teasing border security rollback, Texas plunges in deeper

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

Days after President Donald Trump was elected back to the White House, Texas’ Republican leaders floated the idea that the state might trim its border security budget, which reached $11 billion over the last four years during the Biden administration.

A couple weeks into Trump’s second term, away with all that.

The Legislature’s lead budget writers have proposed spending another $6.5 billion on border security over the next two years, about what is currently budgeted. And GOP leaders are moving to support the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including mass deportation efforts, far more aggressively than before — even as illegal border crossings remain low.

For the last four years, top Texas Republicans blamed then-President Joe Biden's “open border policies” for forcing the state to spend billions of state taxpayers’ money to secure the border it shares with Mexico. With Trump back in office, some of the same leaders are ready to continue spending — now to bolster the Trump administration's promised crackdown on illegal immigration.

“After four years of failed policies, Texas finally has a partner in President Trump,” Gov. Greg Abbott said last week as he directed state police to help federal immigration agents find and arrest immigrants who have arrest warrants. “Together, we will end this crisis and make America safe once again.”

Since Trump took office last month, Abbott has also sent extra state troops to the border, ordered state agencies to work with federal officials on border enforcement and signed an agreement with the Trump administration authorizing Texas National Guard soldiers to make immigration arrests.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — who oversees the state Senate — announced last week that one of his top legislative priorities this session would be requiring local law enforcement to “assist the federal government’s deportation efforts.” Abbott endorsed the idea during his State of the State speech on Sunday, the same day Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he had signed an agreement vowing to “assist with and facilitate” Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has also offered Trump a 1,400-acre ranch site in the Rio Grande Valley for the same purpose.

Abbott and Patrick suggested the possible border security spending cutbacks. Patrick did not respond to a request for comment.

“Texas has held the line against the Biden-Harris border crisis for the past four years,” gubernatorial spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said. “Gov. Abbott looks forward to continuing to work closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and the nation."

Meanwhile, state lawmakers have filed or plan to file bills that would further cement the state’s role in immigration enforcement — which federal law and repeated court rulings has established as a federal responsibility.

“Texas has made a major investment to protect our border,” said state Sen. Pete Flores, a Pleasanton Republican who serves on the Senate Finance Committee. “We're going to take a more proactive policy stance in maintaining what we've gained and holding our position and preserving our border, while the president and the federal government return to their full capacity of doing their job protecting our border.”

To be sure, GOP leaders are also looking at ways to curb Texas’ border spending. Abbott has asked the federal government to reimburse the state for $11 billion spent on border security under Biden. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is supporting the ask, and Abbott plans to meet with U.S. House and Senate leadership this month to discuss recouping the money, according to the governor’s chief of staff, Robert Black.

Among the biggest state border security expenditures is the $2.3 billion allotted to the Texas Military Department, which oversees the National Guard and its thousands of members deployed to the border under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative. State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, noted at a budget hearing last week that if the Trump administration ordered the National Guard to the border, rather than Abbott, the state would no longer be on the hook for paying their salaries. That change alone would save Texas $200 million a month, Huffman said.

Asked by Huffman if there was “any hope” of making that change, Black said he heard “a hot rumor” that Pete Hegseth, the newly confirmed defense secretary, might be coming to Texas soon to discuss the matter with the military department’s leader, Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer. Hegseth visited El Paso on Tuesday, his first stop at the border as secretary.

“The governor would love for us to be back down to the [border security spending] levels we were [at] under President Bush and President Obama and even President Trump the first time — the four to 800 million range,” Black said at the Finance Committee hearing, referring to the $800 million lawmakers put toward border security every two years before Biden took office.

If lawmakers go ahead with the $6.5 billion, that would push their six-year border security budget — from August 2021 through August 2027 — to nearly $18 billion.

In contrast, the Legislature budgeted about $3.4 billion for border security over the 14-year span from 2007 — when lawmakers began regularly setting aside state funds for border operations — through 2021, when the spending surge began.

“These opening numbers in the initial budget bills are opening salvos in negotiating positions,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin. “Whether those numbers stay the same or are reduced is going to depend on how relations with the Trump administration unfold.”

In his proposed budget, Abbott recommended that the Legislature “continue its funding of border security until the federal government assumes operational control to keep Texans safe and address this crisis once and for all.”

Regardless of spending, Republican lawmakers have already laid the groundwork for an enduring state role in immigration enforcement through a 2023 law that allows Texas police to arrest people for illegally crossing the Mexico border. The law, known as Senate Bill 4, has been put on pause amid a legal challenge.

Additionally, Texas has a way to go on a project spearheaded by Abbott to build a wall along much of the Texas-Mexico border. Lawmakers have approved some $3 billion for the effort, which so far has yielded dozens of fragmented sections scattered across six counties. State contractors had built 50 miles of wall through November, or 6% of the 805 miles the state has designated for building.

The Legislature also passed a law in 2023 that increases the minimum sentence from two years to 10 years for people convicted of smuggling immigrants or operating a stash house. And Republicans tried to create a new state border policing unit, envisioned as a way to relieve strain on the National Guard, but the measure failed.

State Rep. David Spiller, a Jacksboro Republican who carried SB 4 in the House, said he intends to file the lower chamber’s bill that would require police to help federal immigration authorities — and withhold state grant funds for a year from any law enforcement entity that does not oblige.

Spiller said he is also working on a bill that would require police officers to ask about a person’s immigration status when they detain them. Under current law, police are allowed to ask but Spiller said many don’t.

“We shouldn’t have to spend as much money,” Spiller said about the state’s role at the border. “But we are still going to have to address the ills and the wrongs of the Biden administration.”

Perhaps no community has felt the state’s all-out effort to control the border more than Eagle Pass, where Texas officials took over a municipal park they have yet to return, dropped a buoy barrier in the Rio Grande and built a military base to house the National Guard soldiers deployed to the area.

State Rep. Eddie Morales’ district stretches nine counties along the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso to Eagle Pass, where he grew up. The third-term Democrat sees a waste of money in some of the state’s border initiatives. He pointed to videos of migrants walking around the state’s floating barrier — which has affected the water flow of the Rio Grande in that area.

“I’m open to those discussions as to how best to use the money that will be allocated from the state,” Morales said. “I also think that we should be laser focused to make sure that we’re getting the most bang for the buck with the use of those Texas taxpayers’ dollars.”