Texas Was a Loyal Partner in Trump’s Immigration Machine. Now, It Faces a New Test

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott placed Texas at the center of the immigration debate for years, launching aggressive state-led efforts to clamp down on border crossings and antagonizing Democrats by busing thousands of migrants to blue cities across the country.

But Democrat Gina Hinojosa’s election as governor has flipped that dynamic on its head, and Texas’ run as a loyal partner in President Donald Trump’s immigration machine is likely over. {snip}

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Democrats’ sweep into most of Texas’ top levers of power — the governor’s mansion, the attorney general’s office, and the state House — now raises a question that reaches well beyond Austin: How much of the nation’s most extensive state-federal immigration partnership survives?

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But a Republican-held state Senate and a law requiring sheriffs to sign on to those agreements mean the pivot could prove challenging — especially with Trump and Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s enforcement policy and his new chief of staff, likely to push for continuing arrests.

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But the administration may be getting a preview. On Friday, Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed a new directive limiting cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement during traffic stops in the city where an ICE officer’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican construction worker, in July sparked outrage.

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The election results were a blow to the Trump administration, which looked to Texas early on to, in part, guide its approach to immigration enforcement and set expectations for state and local coordination. Trump plucked Abbott advisors to serve in his administration and even adopted some of the governor’s ideas.

{snip} But many of the voters who backed Hinojosa had other priorities in mind, such as her promise to curtail data center construction in the state. Meanwhile, people who said immigration enforcement policy was crucial to their vote were +17 for Abbott, CNN’s Voter Poll showed.

Hinojosa has called Abbott’s border operation “political theatre,” and said it needs to reviewed. Nathan Johnson, who will succeed Republican Ken Paxton as the state’s attorney general, told CNN in an interview that he will look critically at the handful of partnerships state agencies have entered with ICE through the 287(g) program. The program allows for different levels of cooperation, from administrative tasks to active enforcement. (Hundreds of local agencies in Texas have separately signed onto the agreements.)

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The governor-elect’s impact on the military dimension of immigration enforcement could go further than Operation Lone Star, too.

National Guard members from Texas are among a multi-state contingent supporting DHS and ICE with “logistical, transportation and administrative support” for its their operations, a National Guard Bureau spokesperson told CNN. The force includes roughly 1,400 guard members from 17 states, including Alaska, Georgia, Iowa and Texas.

The guard members are in a deployment status where the federal government covers their costs but the respective governors are in control. That means that incoming Democratic governors like Hinojosa or Iowa’s Rob Sand could immediately pull troops from the mission.

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Trump, when asked Thursday about expected changes at the Texas-Mexico border under Hinojosa, said, “I am sure that the new governor is going to want to have security at the Texas border.”

“If they don’t continue my policy, I will,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

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State and local law enforcement cooperate more closely and extensively with the federal government in Texas than any other state, according to an analysis from advocacy group FWD.us.

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