By Alejandro Serrano / The Texas Tribune
The massive mission of several billion dollars in Texas to strengthen its border with Mexico helped the Sheriff of the County Terll Thaddeus Cleveland to hire two full -time deputies and three part -time. This gave him the money to buy equipment and new vehicles. According to the words of the law, he “kept us alive” because the number of illegal border crossings has skyrocketed under the Biden administration to record heights.
And Cleveland, who has become sheriff after 26 years as an agent of border patrol, always has needs. He said he hoped and praised to be able to hire more deputies.
But he is also concerned about the state plowing billions of dollars of taxpayers in border security as the border becomes more silent – and President Donald Trump promises mass deportations of undocumented immigrants living throughout the country.
“President Trump being in the White House, I foresee that the federal government spends more money. State legislature should certainly not have to spend so much money,” he said in an interview. “Why do we ask (for) that?”
Three hundred and thirty-five miles east of the county of Terrell, state legislators and managers in Austin are asking for this.
While the Legislative Assembly is based on the details of the state spending plan for the next two years, $ 6.5 billion for border security have sailed in both chambers with little fanfare. Meanwhile, the number of arrests along the border has decreased to a net and the federal government began to extend its immigration application to expel as many people as Trump has promised on the campaign track.
If it is approved, the creditor would increase the tab for state -owned state security expenditure to nearly $ 18 billion since 2021, when governor Greg Abbott began state repression, the Lone Star operation, in response to the Immigration policies of the Biden administration. This new amount would be more than five times the $ 3.4 billion that state legislators have spent border security in previous 14 years, when legislators have started to regularly allocate funds to border operations.
“It is difficult to assert that politics around immigration and the border has already been particularly concerned about good governance,” Jim Henson, who heads Texas Politics Project told UT Austin.
The December survey of the project, after the presidential election, revealed that 45% of Texas voters estimated that the state spent too little on border security. This number increased to 63% among only republican voters.
“If you are trying to balance good governance and a semblance of budgetary responsibility with the policy on this issue, as a republican or elected republican legislator, the policy still weighs very strongly on this scale,” said Henson.
At various times in the past four years, Abbott has declared that the state had to maintain its presence – and its expenses – along the border until it reaches the “operational control” of the border.
“Texas will not stop as long as we have not obtained a complete operational control of the border,” said Abbott in June when he welcomed troops in a new military base that the State built in Eagle Pass.
The American Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said last month that the nation was about to achieve this goal.
Customs and the protection of American borders “have literally have almost 100% operational control (de) the border, which means that our country is safe and that we know who enters this country,” said Noem to Newsnation.
In a press release, Abbott’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris noted that the state had devoted money to border security before 2021.
“Governor Abbott will continue to work with the Legislative Assembly to determine the appropriate financing levels,” said Mahaleris. “This funding is essential to ensure that Texas can continue to work closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and our nation.”
State senator Joan Huffman, a Houston republican who is a main writer of the state budget, also seemed open to the idea of redirecting money currently assigned to border security. She said that she closely monitored the illegal level passages and the flow of drugs and weapons with the governor’s office, the state management and the state police “in order to determine the appropriate level of state support required to fully secure the border and ensure the safety of the Texans”.
In a statement in the gallery, Huffman said that Texas “undoubtedly benefits from the emphasis put by the Trump administration on the reintegration of security at our southern border. … It is essential that the State uses taxpayers in a prudent manner and in coordination with the continuous efforts of the federal government.”
But it is not clear how much appetite there is to modify the recent border commitment of several billion dollars of the State.
During a budgetary debate in the House last week, representative Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, tried without success to move the border security budget to give Texas teachers a salary increase. “We could give you a dollars billion, and you would always cry with this nonsense of red meat,” said Rodríguez Ramos.
A few weeks ago, Senator of the State Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat in Austin who sits on the border security committee of the upper chamber, went to Del Rio to verify the military operations of the State, the international port and the Lone Staging operation. When she visited the Rio Grande, she said that a tent installed to book people arrested under operation Lone Star had a lonely person-a Texas American citizen accused of a crime, she said.
Eckhardt said in an interview that the $ 6.5 billion currently envisaged may not even cover the cost of certain immigration proposals that legislators are currently considering. She underlined a potential ban on granting a deposit to undocumented immigrants accused of crimes – which could increase local government costs if it is not authorized by the State to release the individual.
“We are changing the cost of Trump’s goal on state and local taxes,” said Eckhardt.
Selene Rodriguez, an expert in border and immigration for the Public Policy Foundation Texas, an influential conservative reflection group, said the state will always have a role to play in border security. But she would like more transparency in expenditure.
“I myself am a great supporter of increased public security efforts because I think it is one of the rare legitimate roles of the government,” said Rodriguez. “But if you are going to do it, do it properly. Align the pockets appropriately, and if you don’t need 5,000 guards on the border, I may not have them there.”
At least two invoices in this session called to audit the Lone Star operation. The two bills, one in each chamber, were referred to the committee. In mid-April, none had received an audience.
This story was initially published by Texas Tribune and distributed by a partnership with the Associated Press.
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