Texas is no longer funding the construction of a wall along its southern border as state lawmakers have suggested that this responsibility will shift to the federal government.
The move comes after years of aggressive spending under Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who during former President Joe Biden’s sole term in office announced the state would keep building President Donald Trump’s border wall on its own. However, now that Trump is back in the White House, Texas GOP lawmakers and members of Abbott’s administration have expressed that the job of securing the state’s sprawling border with Mexico will now primarily return to the federal government, The Texas Tribune reported.
The limited progress made on Texas’ construction of the wall had raised growing concerns over cost and feasibility, the Tribune reported. The state had completed 61.8 miles of wall as of April — a relatively small stretch of Texas’ over-1,200-mile border with Mexico — according to the Texas Facilities Commission. In response, lawmakers in Austin have begun weighing alternative approaches.
Texas state lawmakers in early June finalized a $3.4 billion budget for border security for the year. Republican Texas State Sen. Joan Huffman, the budget’s primary writer, told the Tribune that this money would not be allocated toward border wall construction. However, the senator stressed that this change was not because lawmakers do not “think it’s an ongoing need to secure the border.”
“[Border security] should have always been a function of the federal government, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really being done,” Huffman added.
A spokesperson for Abbott said that “Texas will continue to maintain a robust presence with our federal partners to arrest, jail, and deport illegal immigrants,” the Tribune reported.
The Lone Star State had taken an aggressive stance on border security, during the Biden administration, as migrant crossings surged and the state grew increasingly frustrated with the administration’s immigration policies. In March 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a state-run initiative intended to “fill the dangerous gaps created by the… [Biden Administration’s]… refusal to secure the border,” according to an August 2024 press release from the governor’s office. The effort mobilized the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to increase enforcement along the southern border — resulting in thousands of apprehensions and arrests of illegal migrants.
Currently, Trump’s sweeping tax and spending package, the “one big, beautiful bill” is under consideration by the U.S. Senate — having passed the House in May. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the bill “the largest investment in our border security in a generation.”
The legislation would provide roughly 10,000 new personnel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) criminal investigators, as well as funding for land and air transportation. It also allocates funds for building more than 700 miles of new border wall and hundreds of miles of additional barriers.
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