EDINBURG, Texas (Border Report) — Texas lawmakers on Thursday considered strict immigration-related legislation that would allow peace officers to send migrants who enter the state illegally back across the border.

The Texas House State Affairs Committee held a day-long public hearing on two measures, including HB 4, which would create new state criminal charges for migrants who enter Texas illegally.

They also considered a proposed resolution, HCR 1, calling for an investigation into the Colony Ridge subdivision, east of Houston, where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleged in a letter to federal officials on Thursday that the subdivision is full of undocumented migrants, as well as drug traffickers and rampant with violent crime.

The Special Session began Oct. 9 and lawmakers were at first preoccupied with measures dealing with school vouchers and education. But Abbott also has put border security, Colony Ridge, and ending COVID-19 restrictions on this special session for the 88th Legislature.

The House State Affairs Committee on Thursday afternoon passed HB4 out of committee, by a vote of eight to three, without any changes But the measure still must be scheduled for a full House vote.

The vote came after hours of testimony by local leaders, state officials, migrant advocates and citizens.

HB4 was proposed by Republican state Rep. David Spiller, who represents several counties near the Oklahoma state line north of Dallas, and he testified that the measure would allow law enforcement the option to take migrants to the border and deposit them at the ports of entry. Also, first-time offenders would be given the option to comply.

But if they don’t, they face charges and possible jail time. This ranges from six months to 20 years depending if they have other outstanding charges or are repeat offenders.

“We have a crisis at our southern border that includes terrorists,” Spiller told the committee. “Texans know the Biden administration has failed to enforce our borders.”

“It’s a landmark bill that allows Texans to protect Texans and to send illegal aliens back,” he said. “Our cries for help and enforcement of immigration laws have been ignored by President Biden. We’ve had enough.”

The measure is similar to SB11, which passed the Senate on Oct. 12, but still needs a final vote.

State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democrat from McAllen, voted against SB11. On Thursday he told Border Report that he doesn’t believe SB11 or HB4 are constitutional.

“I don’t think either one of them is constitutional. Federal law preempts state law. And I’m certain that the state is looking for a way to challenge part of the authority of the federal government and preempt state law because of the immigration challenges we face along the border,” Hinojosa said from his Edinburg law office.

Hinojosa is vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He said that in the past 11 months, 1.1 million migrants have crossed into Texas from Mexico from Brownsville to El Paso.

If they were all to be incarcerated — at a cost of $77 per day — he said it would cost the state up to $2 billion for a biennium, or two-year period.

“We don’t have the capacity to incarcerate so many people,” Hinojosa said.

He added that law enforcement “would be profiling” and that would put “many of our community at risk.”

He said Mexico also has not agreed to take back migrants, many whom aren’t Mexican nationals.

“What if Mexico refuses to take people from Venezuela, El Salvador, South America, people from Africa or Asia? It’s a big issue. What happens then? We go and arrest them?” he said.

The State Affairs Committee also voted Thursday to pass SB4, a Senate measure that would increase the jail time for those who smuggle migrants or store them in stash houses or other unsafe conditions.

The bill needs to be scheduled for a vote of the full House.

A row of mobile home is shown in the Colony Ridge development Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023, in Cleveland, Texas. For weeks in Texas, conservative media and GOP activists have been pushing unsubstantiated claims that Colony Ridge has become a …

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No vote was taken Thursday on HCR 1, the resolution proposed regarding an investigation into Colony Ridge, and at one point during Thursday’s hearing, state Rep. Jay Dean, a Republican from Longview, said “Why are we even here doing this?”

Over 50,000 people live in Colony Ridge, Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader testified.

“As far as I can find out. there have been no cartel arrests for crimes in Liberty County in the past three years,” Rader said.

Paxton’s letter — sent to 25 members of Congress and top state officials — said “The scale of the Colony Ridge development has proved unmanageable for effective law enforcement and other key standards of acceptable governance. Violent crime, drug trafficking, environmental deterioration, public disturbances, infrastructure overuse, and other problems have plagued the area and nearby towns.”

Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw testified “there is not a community in Texas not impacted by Mexican cartels, and gangs.”

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Border Report) — A delegation from the Chicago mayor’s office visited this South Texas border city on Friday to get tips on how to deal with the migrant surge that is plaguing the Windy City.

Several members, including a deputy mayor who is in charge of immigration issues, visited with Brownsville city officials, as well as nonprofit volunteers who assist asylum-seekers who are legally released by the Department of Homeland Security after crossing into the United States.

The director of a nonprofit who met with them said afterwards she thinks the visit was “helpful” to them.

“The Chicago delegation came to really see what the operation looks like here in Brownsville. I think, you know, it is very different challenges. Of course, migrants arriving in Chicago are there for long-term shelter versus here we’re just a quick stop. So I think their challenges are very different. But it was, I believe, very helpful for them to see the operation that happens here, and the steps that we take so we can help them move onward,” Astrid Dominguez, executive director of the nonprofit Good Neighbor Settlement House, told Border Report after their morning meeting.

The delegation visited the Welcome Center, which is run by the nonprofits Good Neighbor and Team Brownsville, which offer migrants food, snacks, toiletries and travel information.

The Welcome Center is currently receiving 300 to 500 asylum-seekers per day, Dominguez said. That’s down from the 1,000-plus migrants who received help daily in the weeks leading up to the lifting of Title 42 in May.

Most of the migrants crossing here from Mexico are Venezuelans.

On Friday, Border Report saw several busloads of adult men being dropped off at the Border Patrol processing facility and then walking across the street to the Welcome Center. When they left, they had bags in their hands loaded with free goodies, and some had new shoes and clothes. Many were shaking their hands in the air and yelling out the towns to which they were heading.

Jesus Manuel Recelvado, 30, is heading to Los Angeles. He and a buddy were taking a bus but were waiting for a fellow Venezuelan friend to be processed and released.

He says it took them over a month to get to Brownsville and he said they were “extorted” by the drug cartel in Mexico and forced to pay thousands of dollars to cross the Rio Grande. In Spanish, he repeatedly said how grateful to God and the folks of South Texas for helping here in this new country.

“It’s an opportunity I don’t take lightly. And I want to immigrate correctly. I want to do everything right and legally,” he told Border Report.

He says he has family in Los Angeles who are waiting for him, and he hopes to get a construction job there, when he is allowed to work.

City of Brownsville Emergency Management Administrator Rene Tabarez Jr., says every migrant who boards a state bus headed to Chicago is checked out prior, and the city makes calls and ensures that every migrant has a relative or support network there.

“We vet those individuals. It’s a process that we do to make sure they’re not going to any other shelters, they’re not going to any police stations — anywhere you have designated as a shelter. The last thing we want is for them to go there. We want to make sure they’re going to a sponsor or going somewhere or if they might be going to a surrounding city around there that they’re going to have someone that’s going to facilitate that process for them right,” Tabarez told Border Report.

A couple miles away, dozens of charter buses were holed up in the parking lot of a motel, waiting to be filled with migrants heading to Chicago and other cities.

Over 16,500 migrants have been bused to Chicago from the Texas border in the past 14 months through the state’s Operation Lone Star border security initiative, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said Friday.

Other cities migrants have been sent to include:

• Over 12,500 migrants to Washington, D.C. since April 2022.

• Over 21,100 migrants to New York City since August 2022.

• Over 3,200 migrants to Philadelphia since November 2022.

• Over 4,600 migrants to Denver since May 18.

• Over 1,000 migrants to Los Angeles since June 14.

But New York and Chicago have struggled to house the migrants.

Migrants are sleeping outside on concrete sidewalks in Chicago, on police station floors and in an airport, according to reports.

And as colder weather sets in, city officials are worried what will happen to them if they don’t find safe and warm housing

That’s why the mayoral delegation toured the Texas border this week, starting in El Paso and visiting San Antonio before working their way to this Gulf Coast city across from Matamoros, Mexico.

Migrant men are dropped off by law enforcement at a Border Patrol processing center in downtown Brownsville, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2023. The City of Brownsville assists state and federal officials to help asylum-seekers who are legally released to find travel, and ensure they have housing and support. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report Photos)

Three aldermen had been on the trip but returned to Chicago before making it to Brownsville, we’re told, after reports of an incident involving another alderperson and an unruly crowd angry over the migrant situation.

Dominguez said after meeting with city officials she feels for their predicament and that’s why it’s so important that migrants are fully aware and prepared to go to these cities.

“It’s education for us and for migrants, right?” she said. “Right now people are sleeping on the streets. … You go just because you heard there’s housing that might not be the case, right? So make sure you have a sponsor. And if you’re going there that you really have a place to stay.”

She said her organization is always looking for volunteers to help at the Welcome Center along with Team Brownsville volunteers. They also need supplies and donations to continue passing out items to those headed elsewhere.

More information can be found on the Good Neighbor Settlement House website; as well as the Team Brownsville website.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Border Report) — The Texas Department of Public Safety has stopped mandatory inspections of all commercial trucks crossing international bridges into the Lone Star State, DPS officials told Border Report.

But some inspections are still happening, DPS officials said.

Inspections in Laredo and El Paso are “random,” a DPS official said.

“The Texas Department of Public Safety has resumed normal commercial vehicle safety inspections at the Bridge of the Americas, the Ysleta–Zaragoza Bridge and the Colombia Bridge, which includes random inspections, as those vehicles cross into Texas. DPS is no longer conducting commercial vehicle inspections at the Tornillo Port of Entry. For security reasons the department does not discuss operational specifics,” according to a statement provided to Border Report by DPS spokeswoman Ericka Miller.

The announcement comes after Mexico’s president in the past couple weeks complained of long lines and delays truckers were facing trying to cross north into Texas due to the inspections.

The inspections are part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star border security initiative.

The state has spent over $10 billion in the past two years on border security.

Truck inspections involve checking brakes, window wipers and other vehicle equipment. However, DPS troopers are not allowed to open cargo holds.

Inspections stopped in Eagle Pass a week ago but then were started last week in Laredo where most commercial trucks cross into the United States of any ports in the country.b