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HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that three weeks after Molly Cook was sworn in as a freshman state senator in February, the Houston Democrat was approached by a group of lobbyists with the Texas Apartment Association. “They asked me if I was a landlord,” said Cook, one of the few lawmakers who rents her home, “and said that they were here to support legislation that streamlines evictions.” The apartment association has been a powerful force at the Capitol for decades. Their efforts have helped turn Texas into one of the most landlord-friendly states, with laws that let property owners lock renters out while eviction cases are still ongoing and charge almost unlimited fees on top of rent. But the sweeping bill it pitched to Cook, widely marketed as a crackdown on squatting, is testing the group’s influence and just how far lawmakers are willing to go to strip tenants’ rights. Under mounting pushback from tenant advocates and lawmakers and ahead of a key House vote, the association said this week it was open to changing the bill’s most contentious reform, a provision that lawyers said would deny due process to the state’s 12 million renters.

As filed by state Rep. Angie Chen Button and state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, both Republicans, the bill would end a requirement that landlords provide notice to vacate when evicting a tenant for any reason other than falling behind on rent. It would also allow them to request a summary judgment in all types of eviction cases, meaning they could be decided without a trial. Proponents, led by the TAA, say the reforms would help speed up the eviction process for landlords and make it easier to reclaim their properties from people who illegally occupy them. Critics warn doing away with those protections would punish all renters in the state for the rare instance of an illegal squatter. The House vote could come as early as Friday. “It’s very, very easy” to evict a tenant in Texas, said state Rep. Gary Gates, a Richmond Republican and the owner of more than 30 apartment complexes across Harris County. “What they’re trying to do is, under the guise of squatters, they’re trying to take away due process. That’s not needed. I already have an incredible advantage.”

McALLEN (AP) — The Trump administration has continued releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to non-governmental shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border after telling those organizations that providing migrants with temporary housing and other aid may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.

Border shelters, which have long provided lodging, meals and transportation to the nearest bus station or airport, were rattled by a letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that raised “significant concerns” about potentially illegal activity and demanded detailed information in a wide-ranging investigation. FEMA suggested shelters may have committed felony offenses against bringing people across the border illegally or transporting them within the United States.

“It was pretty scary. I’m not going to lie,” said Rebecca Solloa, executive director of Catholic Charities Diocese of Laredo.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continued to ask shelters in Texas and Arizona to house people even after the March 11 letter, putting them in the awkward position of doing something that FEMA appeared to say might be illegal. Both agencies are part of the Department of Homeland Security.

After receiving the letter, Catholic Charities received eight to 10 people a day from ICE until financial losses forced it to close its shelter in the Texas border city on April 25, Solloa said.

The Holding Institute Community, also in Laredo, has been taking about 20 families a week from ICE’s family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas, Executive Director Michael Smith said. They come from Russia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Papua New Guinea and China.

Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, has been receiving five to 10 people day from ICE, including from Honduras and Venezuela, said Ruben Garcia, its executive director.

International Rescue Committee didn’t get a letter but continues receiving people from ICE in Phoenix, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been made public. The releases include people who had been held at ICE’s Krome Detention Center in Miami, the site of severe overcrowding.

ICE’s requests struck Solloa as a “little bit of a contradiction,” but Catholic Charities agreed. She said some guests had been in ICE detention centers two to four weeks after getting arrested in the nation’s interior and ordered released by an immigration judge while their challenges to deportations wound through the courts. Others had been flown from San Diego after crossing the border illegally.

Those released were from India, China, Pakistan, Turkey, and Central and South America, Solloa said.

Smith, a Methodist pastor, said that the FEMA letter was alarming and that agreeing to continue caring for people released by ICE was “probably not a good idea.” Still, it was an easy choice.

“There’s some things that are just right to do,” he said.

Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, drew a distinction with large-scale releases under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. The Biden administration worked closely with shelters but, during its busiest times, released migrants at bus stops or other public locations.

“Under under the Biden administration, when ICE has aliens in its custody who are ordered released, ICE does not simply release them onto the streets of a community — ICE works to verify a sponsor for the illegal alien, typically family members or friends but occasionally a non-governmental-organization,” McLaughlin said.

The government has struggled to quickly deport people from some countries because of diplomatic, financial and logistic challenges. Those hurdles have prompted ICE to deport people to countries other than their own, including El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and — this week — South Sudan. If those options aren’t available, ICE may be forced to release people in the United States.

People can challenge deportations in immigration court, though their options are much more limited when stopped at the border. If a judge orders their release, ICE is generally left with no choice but to release them.

Families pose another challenge. ICE is generally prohibited from holding families with children under 18 for more than 20 days under a long-standing court agreement that the Trump administration said Thursday it would try to end.

The Trump administration has boasted that it virtually ended the practice of releasing people who cross the border illegally with notices to appear in immigration court. The Border Patrol released only seven people from February through April, down from 130,368 the same period a year earlier under President Joe Biden. But those figures do not include ICE, whose data is not publicly available

FEMA awarded $641 million to dozens of state and local governments and organizations across the country in the 2024 fiscal year to help them deal with large numbers of migrants who crossed the border from Mexico.

FEMA has suspended payments during its review, which required shelters to provide “a detailed and descriptive list of specific services provided.” Executive officers must sign sworn statements that they have no knowledge or suspicions of anyone in their organizations violating the smuggling law.

The releases show how border shelters have often maintained close, if cordial, relations with federal immigration authorities at the ground level, even when senior officials publicly criticize them.

“We have a good working relationship with our federal partners. We always have,” Solloa said. “They asked us to help, then we will continue to help, but at some point we have to say, ‘Yikes I don’t have any more money for this. Our agency is hurting and I’m sorry, we can’t do this anymore.’”

Catholic Charities hosted at least 120,000 people at its Laredo shelter since opening in 2021 and housed 600 to 700 people on its busiest nights in 2023, Solloa said. It was counting on up to $7 million from FEMA. The shelter closed with loss of nearly $1 million, after not receiving any FEMA money.

Holding Institute, part of United Women in Faith, has cut paid staff and volunteers to seven from 45 amid the absence of federal funding, Smith said. To save money, it delivers most meals without protein. Language differences have been challenging.

The International Rescue Committee said in a statement that it intends to continue providing support services to released people in Phoenix.

“As the scale and scope of these needs evolve, the IRC remains committed to ensuring individuals have access to essential humanitarian services, including food, water, hygiene supplies and information,” it said.

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that public schools will get a record-breaking amount of new funding and many teachers will get thousands more dollars of pay under a bill tentatively passed by the Texas Senate late Thursday. The unanimous passage of House Bill 2 by the Capitol’s upper chamber will send the second major education measure to the governor conceived during a legislative session that has been defined by public school policy. A final vote is expected Friday. The bill would add $8.5 billion to public schools, earmarking $4.2 billion for teachers and roughly $1.3 billion for school districts to pay for operating costs such as utilities, buses and insurance that have increased substantially in recent years. “House Bill Two is the most transformative education package in Texas history,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said during debate. “I call it that because we have policies within this bill that will change public education forever.”

The bill, as passed, strikes a compromise between the House and Senate by keeping a prescriptive model of how school districts will spend the infusion of state funds, as the Senate preferred, while also addressing increasingly expensive fixed costs of running public schools that the House hoped to achieve. Under the bill, teachers will see pay raises designed to encourage teacher retention through experience-related bonuses. Those pay raises are doubled for teachers in small, typically rural, districts and could lift teachers’ salaries as much as $8,000 after they reach 5 years of experience and $5,000 for teachers in larger districts. The effect on North Texas schools was not immediately clear as lawmakers rushed to approve the bill with major changes made on the Senate floor before districts were able to perform their own analysis on how it will alter their bottom line. The bill has remained a closely watched piece of legislation for public school officials, many of which are in the process of drafting their budgets for the next school year.