Paxton publishes resources to help Texans impacted by illegal immigration
By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square
As the southern border crisis continues to worsen, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office fields inquiries from state and local law enforcement, border residents, and concerned Texans throughout the state. In response, his office published an information packet to help answer some of their questions.
The document outlines basic legal concepts to help local officials, law enforcement officers, and private property owners as they grapple with unprecedented circumstances “brought on by a federal government that has abdicated its responsibility to secure our border and protect its citizens,” Paxton said.
It doesn’t offer formal legal advice but provides information about key immigration statutes, lawsuits, state statutes, and tools city and county governments can implement.
Texans are encouraged to send immigration-related information and requests to an email – bordercrisis@oag.texas.gov – that he says will be regularly monitored and responded to.
Addressed to his “friends and allies in Texas law enforcement, private property owners, and citizens,” Paxton writes in the document’s introduction, “America is in a border crisis. Texas bears the brunt of it.”
Worse still, he adds, “a combination of federal inaction and an intentional, illegal unwinding of successful Trump-era immigration measures have left local law enforcement, private property owners, and citizens figuring out how to clean up the mess.”
With hundreds of thousands of people illegally crossing into Texas alone, “they are temporarily detained – if at all – before being released,” Paxton said. Then they head north through Texas counties, cities, and private property, bringing “with the property destruction, theft, financial costs, risks of disease, crime, and the cartels.
“The federal government caused this crisis,” he added. “Texans pay the price. Local law enforcement, governmental officials, and Texans are left searching for answers and help. Solutions are difficult to come by.”
Paxton’s office has sued the Biden administration six times over the border crisis. Texas is involved in eight lawsuits related to immigration. “We’re winning,” he said. “But there is still more that must be done.”
The document includes information about the Immigration and Naturalization Act passed by Congress, several cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Texas Penal Code. Paxton says law enforcement officers “can determine the immigration status of anyone under lawful detention and arrest,” and also explains how local authorities are working with federal authorities.
Paxton’s office is also providing assistance to prosecuting attorneys and county attorneys that request help, and to local governments that have issued disaster declarations.
Kinney County, which stretches 16 miles along the southern border, was the first to issue a disaster declaration last year. On April 21, 2021, San Jacinto Day, declared that the “health, life, and property” of its residents were “under imminent threat of disaster from the human trafficking occurring on our border with Mexico.
“The ongoing border crisis has resulted in thousands of illegal aliens invading South Texas and overwhelming our local, state, and federal law enforcement,” the declaration reads. “This continual violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity has resulted in residents of South Texas being assaulted, threatened with violence, and robbed, while also sustaining vast amounts of property damage.”
Goliad County, located 200 miles north of the border, also issued a disaster declaration. Later, more than two-dozen counties did. All counties requested aid from the state, and by the end of May last year, the state also issued a disaster declaration.
Goliad Sheriff Roy Boyd told The Center Square, that illegal immigration is a constitutional issue. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”
Boyd, who regularly posts photos and videos on social media of bailouts in Goliad County involving pursuits by him and his deputies of illegal immigrants, asks, “How are you supposed to have that if you can’t enjoy where you live? How can you pursue happiness when you can’t leave your house when you have to worry about people driving through your property and destroying it? The federal government is violating our rights working with foreign entities to bring all of these people in to terrorize our communities.”
Last year, Paxton’s office produced a Texas Borderlands video series, interviewing sheriffs who describe how illegal immigration is wreaking havoc in their counties. One of them, Jackson County Sheriff AJ Lauderback, told The Center Square that the explosion of crime happened overnight within a few hours of Biden reversing border policies that were working.
His county, located several hundred miles north of the border, stretches along the I-59 corridor from Corpus Christi to Houston. It’s along this corridor where cartels have mastered a human trafficking network, he said, bringing people and contraband north into Texas and to the interior of the U.S.
Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon, another sheriff interviewed in the series, says his county located 275 miles of the border “isn’t what you’d consider a border county. But we are affected by the border crisis every day. We deal with pursuits, bailouts, human smuggling, narcotics, and all of that is coming up highways in this county.”
