Texas Gov.
Greg Abbott and top state lawmakers shifted around roughly $1 billion in federal
coronavirus aid to help pay for their campaign to arrest migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, exposing gaps in a law meant to bolster the country’s response to the ongoing pandemic.
Relying on the availability of generous federal relief funds, Texas repeatedly in recent months rerouted state money toward its controversial immigration crackdown — all without leaving a massive hole in its budget. But critics say the money would have been put to better use tending to a public health crisis that has
killed more than 86,000 people in the state.
The trouble centers on
Operation Lone Star, an initiative announced by Abbott last year, when he
promised that law enforcement would “start arresting everybody” crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The campaign, which detains migrants on state trespassing and other charges, relies on extensive and expensive deployments of National Guard troops.
Civil rights groups have widely derided the effort as discriminatory — and some have
urged the Biden administration to intervene — calling it a harmful political stunt by a Republican governor who harbors aspirations for the presidency. The operation even has seen Texas
send buses of arrested migrants to other cities, including Washington, as
Abbott argues his state “should not have to bear the burden” at the border.
But the program also has been expensive, and to help pay for it, Texas has eased the financial burden using money received under a 2020 law meant to help states battle the coronavirus. The state did so through a series of little-noticed “swaps,” in the words of one aide to the governor, who explained the setup to state lawmakers at a hearing in early April.
Essentially, Texas this year transferred money away from its public health and safety agencies and to the governor’s office to administer Operation Lone Star. That cash, totaling nearly $1 billion, was available because the state had backfilled those same public health and safety agencies with stimulus funds it received from Washington, according to interviews with local officials, submissions to the Texas legislature and missives from the governor’s office itself.
The moves appear to be legal under the stimulus law known as the Cares Act, enacted in March 2020. Congress never prohibited states from rejiggering their budgets to take full advantage of a program called the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which aimed to help cities and states pay front-line workers, purchase supplies and tend to other pandemic needs. The approach helped states save their money, which some local governments later reinvested in their efforts to arrest the spread of the virus. Others, like Texas, however, seized on the federal program to redirect their newly found savings for unrelated uses — including immigration enforcement.
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