DEPORTATIONSAmid Trump Immigration Crackdown, Texas Reins in Border Spending and Shifts Focus to Deportations
With border crossings at record lows, state authorities are being sent to arrest people accused of committing crimes in Texas after entering the country illegally.
For four years, Texas’ Republican leaders argued President Joe Biden’s immigration policies were so lax that they had no choice but to spend an unprecedented $11 billion in state money to secure the border.
Now with President Donald Trump in office, illegal border crossings have sunk to historic lows — and the state is continuing to spend another $3.4 billion on border security over the next two years, more than four times what lawmakers ever budgeted before the Biden-era buildup.
The way the money will be used reflects Texas’ changing strategy in reaction to Trump’s return to the White House, propelled by campaign promises to deliver mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Most of the $3.4 billion will go to the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Military Department, the agencies that have enforced the state’s four-year crackdown by surging police and National Guard troops to the border. Paired with newly approved legislation that will require local cooperation with federal immigration authorities, those agencies will be positioned to offer the Trump administration extra manpower for its immigration enforcement efforts across the state, including raids hundreds of miles from the border.
In their final state budget draft, lawmakers also slashed funding for Texas’ incomplete border wall, a further display of the state ceding border traffic control to the feds and focusing its own resources on interior enforcement.
Both DPS and the Guard have already emerged as force multipliers for the Trump administration’s enforcement apparatus. During Trump’s first weeks in office, Gov. Greg Abbott directed DPS to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and signed an agreement with ICE to let the Guard make immigration arrests.
“Thanks to President Trump’s bold leadership, the federal government is finally fulfilling its obligation to secure the southern border and deport criminal illegal immigrants. Because of these renewed federal assets in Texas, our state can now adjust aspects of state-funded border security efforts,” Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement. “Texas will continue to maintain a robust presence with our federal partners to arrest, jail, and deport illegal immigrants.”
Mahaleris added that specialized units within DPS and TMD will “carry on their missions both at the border and throughout Texas.”
