With the border quiet, Texas ponders spending another $6.5 billion on border security

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Texas’ massive, multibillion-dollar mission to reinforce its border with Mexico helped Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland hire two full-time deputies and three part-timers. It gave him the money to buy equipment and new vehicles. In the lawman’s words, it “kept us alive” as the number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed under the Biden administration to record highs.

And Cleveland, who became sheriff after 26 years as a Border Patrol agent, still has needs. He said he hopes and prays to be able to hire more deputies.

But he also has worries about the state plowing billions of more taxpayer dollars into border security as the border gets quieter and quieter — and President Donald Trump vows mass deportations of undocumented immigrants living throughout the country.

“With President Trump being in the White House, I would foresee the federal government spending more money. The state Legislature surely shouldn’t have to spend that much more money,” he said in an interview. “Why are we asking (for) that?”

Three hundred and thirty-five miles east of Terrell County, state lawmakers and leaders in Austin are asking for just that.

As the Legislature irons out the details of the state’s spending plan for the next two years, $6.5 billion for border security has sailed through both chambers with little fanfare. Meanwhile, the number of arrests along the border has dwindled to a trickle and the federal government has begun expanding its immigration enforcement apparatus to deport as many people as Trump promised on the campaign trail.

If approved, the appropriation would increase the tab for the state’s border security spending to nearly $18 billion since 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott began the state’s own crackdown, Operation Lone Star, in response to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. That new sum would be more than five times the $3.4 billion that state lawmakers spent on border security over the 14 preceding years, when lawmakers began regularly allocating money for border operations.

“It’s hard to make the argument that the politics around immigration and the border have ever been especially preoccupied with good governance,” said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin.

The project’s December poll, after the presidential election, found that 45% of Texas voters felt the state was spending too little on border security. That number increased to 63% among only Republican voters.

“If you’re trying to balance good governance and some semblance of fiscal responsibility with politics on this issue, as a Republican legislator or a Republican elected official, the politics are still weighing very heavily on that scale,” Henson said.

At various points in the last four years, Abbott has said the state must maintain its presence — and spending — along the border until it achieved “operational control” of the border.

“Texas will not stop until we gain full operational control of the border,” Abbott said in June when he welcomed troops to a new military base the state built in Eagle Pass.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month that the nation is close to reaching that goal.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection “literally has almost 100% operational control (of) the border which means that our country is secure and that we know who’s coming into this country,” Noem told NewsNation.

In a statement, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris noted that the state devoted money to border security before 2021.

“Gov. Abbott will continue working with the Legislature to determine appropriate funding levels,” Mahaleris said. “This funding is critical to ensure Texas can continue working closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and nation."

State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who is a lead writer of the state budget, also appeared open to the idea of redirecting the money currently earmarked for border security. She said she was closely monitoring illegal crossings and the flow of drugs and weapons with the governor’s office, state leadership and state police “in order to determine the appropriate level of state support required to fully secure the border and keep Texans safe.”

In a statement to the Tribune, Huffman said Texas “is undoubtedly benefiting from the Trump Administration’s focus on reinstating security at our southern border. … It is essential that the state uses taxpayer funds prudently and in coordination with the federal government’s ongoing efforts.”

But it’s not clear how much appetite there is to make a change to the state’s recent multi-billion-dollar border commitment.

During a budget debate in the House last week, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, unsuccessfully tried to shift the border security budget to give Texas teachers a pay increase. “We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,” Rodríguez Ramos said.

A few weeks ago, State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat who serves on the upper chamber’s border security committee, went to Del Rio to check out the state’s military operations, the international port and Operation Lone Star staging. When she toured the Rio Grande, she said a tent set up to book people arrested under Operation Lone Star held a lone individual — a U.S. citizen from Texas accused of a crime, she said.

Eckhardt said in an interview that the $6.5 billion currently being considered might not even cover the cost of some immigration-related proposals that lawmakers are now considering. She pointed to a potential prohibition on granting bail to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies — which could increase the costs for the local government if it is not allowed by the state to release the individual.

“We are shifting the cost of Trump’s goal onto state and local taxes,” Eckhardt said.

Selene Rodriguez, a border and immigration expert for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, said the state will always have a role to play in border security. But she would like more transparency when it comes to spending.

“I myself am a big proponent of increased public safety efforts because I believe that is one of the few legitimate roles of government,” Rodriguez said. “But if you’re going to do it, do it correctly. Line the pockets appropriately, and if you don’t need 5,000 Guardsmen at the border maybe don’t have them there.”

At least two bills this session called for auditing Operation Lone Star. Both bills, one in each chamber, were referred to committee. As of mid-April, neither had received a hearing.

Disclosure: The Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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