With the second special legislative session coming to a close, a border county attorney is once again asking Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call another special session to create a state agency specifically tasked with focusing on border security.
Abbott has said he would consider calling a special session to revisit the 50 bills he vetoed solely because the legislature couldn’t agree on a property tax relief package, which lawmakers passed during that second special session. The governor also has said a special session is forthcoming to pass school choice legislation.
Another bill likely to be added to a special legislative session is one that enhances penalties for stash houses. Abbott previously listed this issue in the first call for the first special legislative session and it went nowhere. While the House passed it, the Senate instead advanced a range of border security measures. None of the bills went anywhere.
Last month, Abbott signed a handful of border security-related bills after they passed with bipartisan support in the regular legislative session. The legislature also allocated for the next two years nearly $5 billion in funds to keep Operation Lone Star enforcement operations going and build the Texas border wall. However, the signature border security bill in the House, HB 20, which Speaker Dade Phelan tagged as a legislative priority, couldn’t get passed in the House. And some of the strongest border security legislation to ever pass the Senate in the regular and first special session were also killed in the Republican-controlled House.
With Abbott likely to soon schedule a third special legislative session, Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith is calling on him to prioritize border security and create a state agency to specifically secure the border.
Smith first made the request in a letter to the governor and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on May 31. He shared copies of the letters with The Center Square, saying he hasn’t received a response.
“The border crisis touches each and every Texan, irrespective of where they live in our state,” Smith wrote to Abbott. “For Texans living on the border, words cannot adequately describe the conditions on the ground. Our homes are being broken into in the middle of the night. The main streets of our small towns are now the place of high-speed car chases with cartel operatives. Walking outside on our own property after dark is no longer safe. Texans who reside on our border no longer enjoy the comfort and safety of their own home. The violence and lawlessness occurring along the southern border is not sustainable for any sovereign state.”
Creating an effective Texas agency tasked solely with border security would enable the state to potentially hire former Border Patrol agents and maximize on the ground operations to repel unlawful entry, Smith argues.
“As the [Texas] Border Czar [Mike Banks] demonstrated in Brownsville recently, preventing unlawful entry is key to our success,” he said, noting Banks implemented tactics he used during his 25-plus-year career with the Department of Homeland Security.
“Obtaining this same level of experience and knowledge through any existing state agency is impossible,” Smith added. “Mr. Bank’s experience and leadership enabled him to utilize the TMD and DPS to effectively stop all illegal crossings that would have continued to occur under prior strategies employed by DPS.”
Patrick has previously said that a border protection unit should fall under an existing agency like DPS. Smith addressed this in his letter to Patrick, saying, “While DPS is very effective in performing criminal interdiction within the state of Texas, Governor Abbott’s state mission centers upon the securement of the Mexican border itself. The simple truth is that the command structure and mission training of DPS is not suitable to undertake the task of securing the actual border.
“Touting the high number of arrests and drug seizures occurring within the interior of the state only gives evidence of our failure to secure the actual border and preventing [criminal actors and crime] from traveling into the interior of Texas.”
“You can pass all kinds of border protection laws but unless you have the agency and personnel to enforce them, they’re meaningless,” Smith told The Center Square.
“The magnitude of this crisis cannot be overstated,” he said. “The tools that are created to confront this border crisis will ultimately determine the fate of Texas.”
Smith was sworn into office on the same day as President Joe Biden. Smith says his life and the lives of those in his county have never been the same. He first led the counties in issuing a disaster declaration on April 21, 2021, and the county was the first to draft a declaration of invasion, which former Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan signed on July 5, 2022. Since then, over 50 counties issued disaster declarations and over 40 issued invasion declarations, with some overlap.
Brad Coe, the sheriff of Kinney County, responsible for covering 16 miles of shared border with Mexico, says his deputies are doing everything they can to defend the county. But he told The Center Square, they are witnessing an invasion of single, military age men.
