Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy is holding a George Soros-backed district attorney’s feet to the fire after obtaining internal guidance that suggests the liberal prosecutor is taking it easy on criminals.
Travis County, Texas, has become more “dangerous, unjust, and anarchic” since Travis County District Attorney (TCDA) Jose Garza entered office in 2021, according to a letter penned by Roy and first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Texas congressman argues that Garza is not only overseeing a massive dismissal of charges against criminals, but is also specifically directing staff to treat dangerous individuals with kid gloves.
“I have concerns with how the TCDA under your watch is addressing public order broadly in Travis County,” Roy stated to Garza in the letter.
“The police are debilitated and demoralized, victims are discarded and disrespected, and justice is often delayed or denied,” Roy continued. “The purpose of a prosecutor is to ensure that criminality is punished sufficiently to prevent its repetition, and it should be a primary goal of your office to decrease recidivism, not incentivize it.”
A spokesperson for Garza did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
The TCDA dismissed or rejected around 12,700 felony charges — over 3,600 of which were violent, sexual or weapons-related offenses — during Garza’s first two years in office, according to Roy’s letter. Property-related offenses, such as burglaries, more than doubled during Garza’s tenure, soaring from 573 reported offenses in 2020 to 1,175 in 2025, marking a 105% increase.
Garza has long been accused of taking a soft-on-crime approach by his critics, such as when local victims and their family members held a press conference in Austin amid his 2024 re-election campaign and called for change. One domestic violence victim at the time claimed Garza acted more like “a defense attorney for my abuser than like a DA advocating for me” and another woman whose son was killed several years earlier had said she did not feel like justice was served in her son’s case.
Travis County’s top prosecutor handed down specific guidelines that largely call on staff to consider certain mitigating factors when weighing sentencing for serious cases, according to an internal August 2023 memo, which Roy’s office obtained.
In the memo, Garza cautioned TCDA employees that people under 25 do not have fully developed frontal lobes and thus should be considered for second chances, claimed that jail and prison are the least effective means to rehabilitate a criminal and encouraged the consideration of immigration consequences for non-citizen criminals, among other liberal approaches to prosecution.
“Research is clear that youth are more likely to commit violent acts before the age of 25, but that after age 25 the frontal lobe is fully developed and people become less impulsive,” Garza’s email stated. “Young people should be given second chances when they do not pose a threat to public safety, and efforts should be made to keep these young people with their families.”
Roy is now demanding Garza answer what policies from this 2023 memo are still in place and what steps TCDA prosecutors are taking to ensure violent criminals are not being enabled by lenient policies.
“I am demanding immediate accountability from a district attorney’s office – where many of my constituents live in Travis County — that has failed the people it is supposed to protect,” Roy told the DCNF. “The pattern of leniency, missed deadlines, and dismissed charges has real consequences — and those consequences are measured in lives lost and communities put at risk.”
First elected to office in November 2020 after unseating Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore in the Democratic primary, Garza previously served as executive director of the Workers Defense Project, a group that advocates for “those most impacted for immigrant and worker justice in Texas.” The liberal prosecutor has also identified as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Like other far-left prosecutors elected elsewhere in the country, Garza enjoyed monumental support from Soros-funded organizations in the run-up to his 2020 election victory. The Soros-tied organizations Fair and Just Prosecution, Texas Organizing Project and Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC have doled out nearly half a million dollars in support of Garza, according to records compiled by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
Despite a history of lenient policies for criminals in Austin and beyond, Garza has adopted a seemingly opposite position against those tasked with enforcing federal immigration law. In January, Garza was among several high-profile prosecutors who launched Fight Against Federal Overreach (FAFO), a nationwide coalition of liberal district attorneys pledging to prosecute Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for purported violations of law.
“Enough is enough,” Roy told the DCNF. “The residents of Austin deserve a justice system that stands with victims, backs law enforcement, and puts dangerous criminals behind bars, not back on our streets.”
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