DINBURG, Texas – Texas lawmakers on Thursday considered tough immigration legislation that would allow peace officers to send migrants who enter the state illegally back across the border.
The Texas House State Affairs Committee held a day-long public hearing on two measures, including HB 4, which would create new state criminal charges for migrants who enter Texas illegally.
They also considered a proposed resolution, HCR 1, calling for an investigation into the Colony Ridge subdivision east of Houston, where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleged in a letter to federal officials on Thursday that the subdivision is full of undocumented migrants as well as drug traffickers and is rife with violent crime.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin for a third special session this year.
The special session began on 9 October, and lawmakers were initially preoccupied with measures dealing with school vouchers and education. But Abbott has also added border security, Colony Ridge and ending COVID-19 restrictions to this special session for the 88th Legislature.
The House State Affairs Committee passed HB4 out of committee on Thursday afternoon by a vote of eight to three, with no amendments, but the measure must still be scheduled for a vote by the full House.
The vote came after hours of testimony from local leaders, state officials, immigrant advocates and citizens.
HB4 was proposed by Republican state Rep. David Spiller, who represents several counties near the Oklahoma state line north of Dallas, and he testified that the measure would allow law enforcement to take migrants to the border and deposit them at ports of entry. First-time offenders would also be given the opportunity to comply.
But if they don’t, they could face criminal charges and possible jail time. This ranges from six months to 20 years, depending on whether they have other outstanding charges or are repeat offenders.
“We have a crisis on our southern border that includes terrorists,” Spiller told the committee. “Texans know that the Biden administration has failed to enforce our borders.”
“It’s a landmark bill that allows Texans to protect Texans and send illegal aliens back,” he said. “Our cries for help and enforcement of immigration laws have been ignored by President Biden. We’ve had enough.”
The measure is similar to SB11, which passed the Senate on 12 October but still needs a final vote.
State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democrat from McAllen, voted against SB11. He told Border Report on Thursday that he doesn’t believe SB11 or HB4 are constitutional.
“I don’t think either one of them is constitutional. Federal law preempts state law. And I’m sure the state is looking for a way to challenge some of the authority of the federal government and preempt state law because of the immigration challenges we face along the border,” Hinojosa said from his law office in Edinburg.
Hinojosa is vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He said that in the past 11 months, 1.1 million migrants have crossed from Mexico into Texas from Brownsville to El Paso.
If they were all detained – at a cost of $77 a day – he said it would cost the state up to $2 billion for a biennium, or two-year period.
“We don’t have the capacity to incarcerate that many people,” Hinojosa said.
He added that law enforcement “would be profiling” and that would put “many of our communities at risk”.
He said Mexico also hasn’t agreed to take back migrants, many of whom are not Mexican citizens.
“What if Mexico refuses to take people from Venezuela, from El Salvador, from South America, from Africa, from Asia? It’s a big problem. What happens then? Do we go and arrest them?” he said.
The State Affairs Committee also voted on Thursday to pass SB4, a Senate measure that would increase prison sentences for those who smuggle migrants or store them in stash houses or other unsafe conditions.
The bill still needs to be scheduled for a vote in the full chamber.
No vote was taken Thursday on HCR 1, the proposed resolution to investigate Colony Ridge, and at one point during Thursday’s hearing, State Representative Jay Dean, a Republican from Longview, said, “Why are we even here doing this?”
More than 50,000 people live in Colony Ridge, Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader testified.
“As far as I can tell, there have been no cartel arrests for crimes in Liberty County in the last three years,” Rader said.
Paxton’s letter – sent to 25 members of Congress and top state officials – said: “The scale of the Colony Ridge development has proven unmanageable for effective law enforcement and other key standards of acceptable governance. Violent crime, drug trafficking, environmental degradation, public disorder, overuse of infrastructure and other problems have plagued the area and nearby towns”.
Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw testified that “there is not a community in Texas that has not been impacted by Mexican cartels and gangs.
