By Priscilla Alvarez, Michael Williams, CNN
(CNN) — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott placed Texas at the center of the immigration debate for years, launching aggressive state-led efforts to clamp down on border crossings and antagonizing Democrats by busing thousands of migrants to blue cities across the country.
But Democrat Gina Hinojosa’s election as governor has flipped that dynamic on its head, and Texas’ run as a loyal partner in President Donald Trump’s immigration machine is likely over. What replaces it will be a test of how Democrats govern the state that wrote the Republican playbook on border security, according to current and former Homeland Security officials, Democratic lawmakers, and immigrant advocates.
“It’s a foundational shift,” said Jason Houser, who served as chief of staff at Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration. “It’s going to guide what we do on border security nationally. The governor has a clean slate here to really lead.”
Democrats’ sweep into most of Texas’ top levers of power — the governor’s mansion, the attorney general’s office, and the state House — now raises a question that reaches well beyond Austin: How much of the nation’s most extensive state-federal immigration partnership survives?
Hinojosa has called Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” border operation costly, telling The New York Times she would review the operation’s budget after she is sworn in. Her incoming attorney general says he will look critically at the state’s agreements with ICE.
But a Republican-held state Senate and a law requiring sheriffs to sign on to those agreements mean the pivot could prove challenging — especially with Trump and Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s enforcement policy and his new chief of staff, likely to push for continuing arrests.
“It’s too soon to tell,” a Homeland Security official told CNN, when asked if immigration operations are expected to change in the state.
But the administration may be getting a preview. On Friday, Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed a new directive limiting cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement during traffic stops in the city where an ICE officer’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican construction worker, in July sparked outrage.
“I do this to begin a healing process, reduce fear and anxiety across our community,” Whitmire said during a press conference. “I’ve said many times: elections matter.”
Trump himself acknowledged that aspects of his immigration policy were deeply unpopular, telling “60 Minutes” in an interview after the election: “It was too tough. I think it might be too tough.”
A ‘critical look’ at ICE partnerships
The election results were a blow to the Trump administration, which looked to Texas early on to, in part, guide its approach to immigration enforcement and set expectations for state and local coordination. Trump plucked Abbott advisors to serve in his administration and even adopted some of the governor’s ideas.
The swing toward Democrats in Texas were in part a repudiation of Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to Democratic and Republican strategists. But many of the voters who backed Hinojosa had other priorities in mind, such as her promise to curtail data center construction in the state. Meanwhile, people who said immigration enforcement policy was crucial to their vote were +17 for Abbott, CNN’s Voter Poll showed.
Hinojosa has called Abbott’s border operation “political theatre,” and said it needs to reviewed. Nathan Johnson, who will succeed Republican Ken Paxton as the state’s attorney general, told CNN in an interview that he will look critically at the handful of partnerships state agencies have entered with ICE through the 287(g) program. The program allows for different levels of cooperation, from administrative tasks to active enforcement. (Hundreds of local agencies in Texas have separately signed onto the agreements.)
“If I were to keep that agreement, it’s going to be because ICE opens itself up to a true partnership, which gives me private individual investigative authority over actions by ICE committed in my state,” Johnson said.
Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar forecasted what she described as a “common sense” approach to border security. “There’s a way to ensure public safety without punishing sheriffs and counties for not doing the bidding of the Trump administration,” she told CNN. “I think we’re going to have a much more practical approach.”
‘If they don’t continue my policy, I will’
Multiple sources who spoke with CNN expect a change in how Texas asserts itself on immigration and a pullback on some of Abbott’s controversial efforts, including Operation Lone Star, which launched in 2021 as a challenge to former President Joe Biden’s border policies amid a record number of border crossings.
As part of that operation, Abbott transported migrants on buses to Democratic-led cities, blocked a portion of the border to federal agents, set up buoys in the Rio Grande to deter migrants, and signed a bill into law that would give state law enforcement the authority to detain migrants, among other measures.
Trump embraced those ideas, eventually tapping one of Abbott’s senior advisors to serve as US Border Patrol chief and building on some of the state’s measures, such as placing additional buoys in the Rio Grande, as well as leaning on the state for immigration detention.
Hinojosa, the incoming governor, has criticized the multibillion-dollar border-security initiative as a waste of money and had voted against appropriating funds toward it during her time in the Texas legislature.
The governor-elect, who grew up near the border in the Rio Grande Valley, has not indicated what the future of the initiative would look like under her leadership.
CNN reached out to the Hinojosa campaign for comment.
The governor-elect’s impact on the military dimension of immigration enforcement could go further than Operation Lone Star, too.
National Guard members from Texas are among a multi-state contingent supporting DHS and ICE with “logistical, transportation and administrative support” for its their operations, a National Guard Bureau spokesperson told CNN. The force includes roughly 1,400 guard members from 17 states, including Alaska, Georgia, Iowa and Texas.
The guard members are in a deployment status where the federal government covers their costs but the respective governors are in control. That means that incoming Democratic governors like Hinojosa or Iowa’s Rob Sand could immediately pull troops from the mission.
The potential pullback of Operation Lone Star has rattled some of Trump’s allies.
“Texas was always the lone standout of leaning into investment in border security – and MAGA mass deportation policies. It’s a big change coming probably coming for Texas on those scores,” said Todd Bensman, a senior research fellow on border security at the Heritage Foundation and former senior advisor in the Trump administration, who expressed concerns about state support diminishing particularly in the event of another border crisis.
“Border security is best when it’s multi-layered,” he said.
The Homeland Security official also noted that the department has faced challenges with Democratic governors along the border in the past but eventually resolved at least some of those issues in moments of crisis. California, Arizona, and New Mexico — all border states — also have Democratic governors.
Trump, when asked Thursday about expected changes at the Texas-Mexico border under Hinojosa, said, “I am sure that the new governor is going to want to have security at the Texas border.”
“If they don’t continue my policy, I will,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
Dealing with a split legislature
Immigrant advocates in the state expect changes. But not necessarily radical ones — at least not immediately.
“There’s a sense of newness for this dynamic in this state, because it’s been quite a while since the balance of power has been the way it’s going to look,” said Javier O. Hidalgo, an attorney and spokesperson for RAICES, a large Texas-based immigration services and advocacy group.
“I think you’re going to see a period at the state level where you’ll see some kind of alignment, syncing up to figure out the workflows to get those policies in place,” he said.
While Democrats achieved a devastating rout of the state’s ruby-red executive branch and flipped the Texas House, its state Senate remains in Republican control.
The split legislature would make any changes to state law — including laws that made it a state crime to illegally cross the border and compelled many local jurisdictions to cooperate with federal immigration authorities — an uphill slog.
Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro told CNN he expects Hinojosa will have a “big hand in what immigration enforcement looks like” in the state, even if she’ll need the cooperation of the state legislature to change certain law and policies.
“To be clear, you’re still going to have immigration enforcement and border security. But hopefully, it will be a new era where you don’t engage in racial profiling, and you don’t flood the streets with DPS or detention centers with the Texas National Guard because you’re trying to make a big show of mass deportation,” he said.
State and local law enforcement cooperate more closely and extensively with the federal government in Texas than any other state, according to an analysis from advocacy group FWD.us.
Those numbers have been boosted by a state law signed last year by Abbott, compelling sheriffs who operate jails in any of the state’s 254 counties to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in some form.
Most have done so, but some held concerns about how the agreements would affect community trust. Paxton, who lost his US Senate election, launched investigations and sent demand letters to some counties that did not immediately comply.
That law requires the agreements to be signed by next month. But enforcement will largely fall to Democrats who take office in January.
Johnson, the incoming attorney general, said there had always been a respectful working relationship between Texas sheriffs and the federal government – especially in the border area where they work together frequently – and that formalizing that relationship was “unnecessary and took discretion away from local sheriffs.”
“At the same time, enforcing that law falls upon the attorney general,” he said.
Johnson will now have discretion over whether to pursue legal action against holdouts to the agreements. “And if they’re flouting the law for no good reason, then I’ll see to it that they follow the law, even if I don’t like the law,” he said.
Exceptions could be made, he said, for law enforcement officials who believe the law is going to “compromise their ability to provide public safety.”
Activists warn that if the changes in the political tides are not seized upon by Texas Democrats, momentum in the state, and the party’s larger, future ambitions, may be lost. Rochelle Garza, the president of the Texas Civil Rights Project and the Democratic Party’s 2022 nominee for state attorney general, said voters gave the party an opportunity – but also a mandate.
“And frankly,” she said, “if it’s not seized upon, it can be lost.”
CNN’s Davis Winkie contributed.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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