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Monday May 12, 2025
AUSTIN – The Texas House agreed late Thursday to let the governor determine the countries whose residents, governments and other entities could be banned from buying property here.
Members granted the governor such power when they amended Senate Bill 17, whose real estate sales restrictions were limited to countries that the U.S. national director of intelligence has designated as national security threats. Currently, that list includes only China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.
After giving the governor the ability to expand the list of restricted countries, the House then gave SB 17 preliminary approval in a 85-60 vote. The bill now heads back to the Senate.
State Rep. Nate Schatzline, the Republican from Fort Worth who introduced the amendment, said the goal was to make sure that any threats to Texas could quickly be addressed.
“Our governor can act swiftly rather than waiting for a year for that to be added into the [director of national intelligence’s] designated country list,” he said.
That amendment drew rebuke from Democrats.
“This gives the governor unfettered power to add whatever country he wants to in this bill,” said state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of House Democratic Caucus. “It’s kind of dangerous to say one person can decide whatever country he or she wants to add to this without any oversight, without any controls — this is the definition of overreach.”
Schatzline’s amendment also allows the governor to add “transnational criminal organizations” to the list of entities barred from buying Texas property. Schatzline pointed to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as an example.
State Rep. Cole Hefner, the Mt. Pleasant Republican carrying SB 17 in the lower chamber, described the bill during Thursday’s hourslong debate as “securing Texas land and natural resources and making sure that this precious resource does not fall prey to adversarial nations and oppressive regimes that wish to do us harm.”
The bill’s advancement came over opposition from Democrats who are concerned that it could be used to potentially discriminate against Asian Americans.
The bill will need one more House vote before it goes back to the Senate. The upper chamber previously approved a version of the bill, but House members amended several key portions of it Thursday.
The Senate’s previous version would have exempted anyone or any entity that leased the property to someone else for under 100 years. The House limited that exemption to property leased to someone else for one year or less. Rep. Mitch Little called the 100-year lease exemption “a loophole that you could drive a Mack truck through.”
The House also previously amended the bill to exempt lawful permanent residents.
But Democrats failed to make changes to the bill several times Thursday. Their failed amendments included provisions that would have exempted visa holders such as medical students and researchers, performers and athletes. They also raised concerns that the law could hurt the Texas economy.
SB 17 is Brenham Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorst’s second attempt at limiting who can buy property in Texas. Similar legislation she authored in 2023 died in the House. In committee hearings this year, she described the legislation as protecting Texas’ assets from “hostile nations.”
“This is a matter of national security,” she said in March. “Texas must act now to protect our land, food sources, water, and natural resources.”
A batch of new, more conservative lawmakers were elected to the House last year, giving new life to legislation that struggled in previous sessions. Chief among those measures are the creation of school vouchers.
If passed, the bill goes into effect Sept. 1 and would only apply to purchases or acquisitions after that date.
It would require the attorney general’s office to create a process to investigate possible violations and refer the matter to a district court. If the court finds a violation, it would be authorized to order the purchaser to divest from the property either by selling it or terminating the lease, according to the House Research Organization’s most recent analysis of the bill. The court also would be required to refer the matter for potential criminal offenses.
The amount of Texas property owned by entities from outside the U.S. is not tracked in detail, aside from agricultural land. But Joshua Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law, said it is likely a very small fraction. In the U.S. overall, Chinese investors own less than 1% of total foreign-held acreage, according to 2021 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Investors from Russia, Iran and North Korea collectively own less than 3,000 acres.
But to Abraham George, chair of the Texas Republican Party, 1% is too much — which is why the bill was a party priority.
Rep. Angie Chen Button, who was only the second Asian American woman to serve in the Legislature and whose parents fled from China, also spoke in support of the bill Thursday night, saying the bill aims to “protect our freedom, liberty and national security.” She introduced a similar bill last session.
Some Asian Texans are concerned the bill would create animosity and “state-sanctioned racial profiling,” said Lily Trieu, executive director of the civic engagement group Asian Texans for Justice.
The bill doesn’t prohibit purchases of land based on national origin, which would violate federal civil rights laws. Instead, it prohibits people based on their permanent residence.
Wu, who immigrated to the United States from China as a child, said the bill could impact not just Chinese people in Texas, but members of all Asian communities in the state.
“Nobody knows the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean, right? Nobody knows what your immigration status is,” he said in an interview. “When they discriminate against you … when they look for people to assault, they don’t really care what you are. They care that you have Asian face.”
Trieu said the group’s No. 1 concern is that individuals shouldn’t be conflated with governments.
“Just like how no one here would want to travel to another country and be held individually accountable for what Governor Abbott does or what President Donald Trump does,” she said.
“These individuals should not be held accountable for what the government of their national origin does, or what their ideology is, or what, you know, the government does as an entity.”
Trieu said the group was formed to engage Asian Texans in civic participation such as voting, but this bill galvanized people into getting involved in legislation.
Wu expects the bill is just the start of that. And even with its passage, he sees it as a loss for the Republican Party because it could push Asian American voters to shift to the Democratic Party in the 2026 midterm elections.
“I think the Republicans are heading into gale force winds in 2026 if they want to alienate and make enemies of an entire community who for a large part has stayed out of politics,” he said in an interview.
DALLAS (AP) — Texas lawmakers hope to rein in homeowners’ rising insurance bills even as they acknowledge there’s only so much they can do to tackle costs.
Legislators have advanced bills to limit how much insurance companies can hike rates and help homeowners make their homes more insurable. They’ve also sought to compel insurers to be more upfront with homeowners when they decide to yank coverage, or deny it in the first place.
Texans pay some of the highest insurance premiums in the country. On average, Texas homeowners saw their insurance rates spike by double digits in recent years — a far cry from the previous decade when such increases were unheard of. Homeowners’ insurance rates climbed by nearly 19% in 2024, according to the Texas Department of Insurance, slightly down from more than 21% the previous year.
A number of factors have spurred insurance costs in recent years, insurance experts say. For one, property values in Texas surged amid the state’s population boom — raising the cost to ensure homes and businesses. Climate change has intensified extreme weather events like hailstorms, hurricanes, and winter freezes and made severe weather more common. With the state’s population growth, more people have moved into the path of that severe weather. Higher labor and construction material costs have driven up the cost of repairing damage when severe weather events damage a home.
Buying homeowners insurance isn’t an optional cost. Lenders require homebuyers to purchase insurance to obtain a mortgage. Even if a home is paid off, insurance experts say it’s unwise to go without coverage in case disaster strikes.
Even as lawmakers look for ways to tackle the insurance crisis, they acknowledge many of the drivers of insurance costs are beyond lawmakers’ control, they say.
“We can’t control the weather, we can’t control inflation,” state Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican behind one such proposal, told a House committee last month. “I can’t control the availability of building materials, and I can’t control how the houses that are already built were built, what standard they were built to.”
And they find themselves in the position of trying to rein in exorbitant insurance costs without scaring off insurers and cratering the state’s insurance market.
One proposal by state Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, aims to give policyholders a check against steep rate increases. In Texas, insurers can file proposed rate increases with the Texas Department of Insurance, the state’s insurance regulator, and implement the new rates right away. If the agency later decides the increase is unreasonable, they can disapprove it.
Senate Bill 1643, which has cleared the Senate but awaits a committee hearing in the House, would require the insurance department to approve any rate increase above 10% before it can go into effect.
“As companies make significant rate changes, it is incumbent upon the Legislature to ensure that the regulatory environment is giving these filings the level of scrutiny they necessitate,” Schwertner said ahead of a Senate vote on the bill in April.
That proposal has drawn pushback from the insurance industry. Capping rate increases does nothing to address the underlying drivers of the rising cost of providing insurance, said Beaman Floyd, who heads the Texas Coalition for Affordable Insurance Solutions, a group that represents major insurance companies including Allstate, State Farm and USAA. Insurers might pursue lower rate increases than they otherwise would have if they worry regulators wouldn’t approve larger ones, Floyd said — leaving them with mounting financial liabilities that could lead to policy cancellations because insurers can’t afford to provide coverage.
“That’s not good for consumers,” Floyd said.
Requiring the state insurance regulator to review rate increases above 10% doesn’t necessarily mean the regulator will automatically reject those increases, Schwertner said in a statement. The bill “simply seeks to curb unchecked rate filing and review practices,” he said.
Consumer advocates argue the state’s current system doesn’t provide a real check on insurers — one that Schwertner’s proposal could theoretically help create. But they also worry insurers will thwart the intent of the law simply by asking for multiple rate increases, a practice the bill doesn’t cap. Ware Wendell, executive director of the consumer rights group Texas Watch, posited that an insurer could theoretically file a 9% increase one month and seek the same increase the next month.
“Insurance companies could come in and nibble,” Wendell said.
The Texas Department of Insurance would still require insurers to justify their rate increases even if they filed multiple increases a year, Schwertner said. If those increases aren’t justified, the state could still reject the increase, he said.
Insurers and consumer groups agree on some proposals. House Bill 1576, authored by Oliverson, would create a state grant program to help homeowners retrofit their homes to withstand hurricanes and windstorms, modeled after a similar program in Alabama. The idea is that insurers will be more likely to insure a home if it’s hardened against severe weather, and the cost of insuring that home will be lower.
“It’s a very unique way for us to basically drive the cost of insurance down by encouraging folks — not mandating, this isn’t a mandate — to rebuild your home to a higher standard that experiences less risk and less cost,” Oliverson told the House Insurance Committee in April.
That bill cleared the House late last month. The Senate has yet to take action. How much money the state would spend on the program depends on the bill clearing both chambers, and on the outcome of budget negotiations between the House and Senate.
Lawmakers have considered other ideas. The state insurance department is overseen by a single commissioner appointed by the governor. Another Schwertner proposal would expand that to three commissioners, one of which would be required to have expertise in consumer advocacy. Lawmakers have also advanced bills to prevent insurers from forcing consumers seeking homeowners insurance to also purchase auto insurance, and to require insurers to actively disclose why they may deny coverage to homeowners or cancel their policies.
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Two advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Thursday asking the courts to halt new Trump Administration vetting procedures for reuniting children who crossed into the U.S. without their parents, saying the changes are keeping families separated longer and are inhumane.
The lawsuit was filed by the National Center for Youth Law and Democracy Forward in federal court in the District of Columbia. It names the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Refugee Resettlement and seeks a return to prior reunification procedures.
Critics note the government data shows the average time that the children are held in custody before release by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to their sponsors grew from 37 days in January to over 112 days by March.
In February, the Trump administration changed the way it reviews sponsors who want to care for migrant children in government custody, whether parents or relatives of the minors — or others. More changes followed in March and April when the government started to require identification or proof of income that only those legally present in the U.S. could acquire. Advocates for the families affected are asking a judge to declare the changes unlawful and return the agency to the policies in place before that.
“The government has dramatically increased the burden on families in a way that deeply undermines children’s safety. These policy changes are part of a broader unraveling of a bi-partisan, decades-long commitment to support the best interests of unaccompanied children,” said Neha Desai, a managing director at National Center for Youth Law.
Attorneys said they had heard from families who were moments away from receiving their children back when the rules were abruptly changed. Now, many say they are left waiting indefinitely.
“The administration has reversed years of established children’s welfare protections and replaced them with fear, prolonged detention, and bureaucratic cruelty,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward in a statement.
One Mexican woman who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of fears of deportation said she and her 8-year-old son were led to believe repeatedly that they would be reunited, only to find out the new policy changes would derail their plans.
The mother, who arrived first across the border from Mexico, has noticed her son lose hope over the last 11 months, even refusing to unpack after the last time he thought his release from a government-run shelter was imminent.
“He’s seen so many children who have come, leave, and he’s stayed behind,” said the mother, who wasn’t part of the lawsuit.
The Trump administration says it is increasing scrutiny of parents and other sponsors before giving them custody of their children who have crossed the border as unaccompanied minors.
HHS did not immediately respond to emails from AP seeking comment in response to the lawsuit filed Thursday afternoon.
Similar restrictions were imposed in 2018 under Trump’s first presidency during the rollout of a zero-tolerance policy that separated families and required fingerprinting for all members of a household receiving a child. The administration scaled back the requirements after custody times increased.
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This story has been updated to correct that the Department of Homeland Security was not named in the lawsuit as previously stated.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — An asbestos screening clinic in a small Montana town where thousands have been sickened by toxic dust from a nearby mine has been abruptly shuttered by authorities following a court order to seize the clinic’s assets to pay off a judgment to the railroad BNSF.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office closed on Wednesday the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the U.S.-Canada border. The town of about 3,000 people is near a mine that produced asbestos dust for decades, and the clinic has been at the forefront of efforts to help victims.
Courts in Montana have said BNSF contributed to the pollution when it brought contaminated material from the mine through town, and the railway separately faces numerous lawsuits from asbestos victims in Libby and surrounding communities.
But the Texas-based railway prevailed in a 2023 lawsuit alleging the clinic fraudulently made some patients eligible for government benefits when it knew they were not sick. The railway challenged the validity of over 2,000 diagnoses by the clinic and 337 were ruled false.
The railway brought the lawsuit on behalf of the federal government, which provides specialized Medicare services to Libby’s asbestos victims. BNSF was entitled to a share of the $6 million judgment against the clinic, and after adding in attorney fees, court costs and interest, the railway says it’s now owed $3.1 million.
“The judge determined the amount of damages to be repaid, and the process for recovery is set by law,” BNSF spokesperson Kendall Kirkham Sloan said in a statement.
Clinic Executive Director Tracy McNew said the closure would have a broad impact on public health in the Libby area as fewer people are screened for asbestos-related health problems.
“CARD remains committed to its patients and the Libby community and will fight to reopen as soon as possible,” McNew said in a statement.
The clinic for more than 20 years has provided health screenings, monitoring and treatment of patients with problems caused by asbestos exposure. It declared bankruptcy after the judgment in the fraud case was handed down. It kept operating and didn’t pay the money under a settlement reached in bankruptcy court with the federal government that included BNSF.
CARD bankruptcy attorney James “Andy” Patten said the railway’s attempts to collect on the fraud judgment violated the bankruptcy settlement, which was approved by a federal court.
Sloan declined to comment on the bankruptcy settlement.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Texas man associated with a neo-Nazi group was convicted on Wednesday of posting threats to lynch and kill Nashville District Attorney General Glenn Funk after another group member was charged with attacking a downtown bar worker.
David Aaron Bloyed, 60, of Frost, Texas, was found guilty by a federal jury in Nashville of one count of communicating a threat in interstate commerce, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. He faces up to five years in prison at sentencing.
Bloyed was found to have posted a photograph of Funk with the caption, “Getting the rope,” and an emoji finger pointed towards Funk’s image. A second post included a drawing of a person hanging by the neck from a gallows, with the phrase, “The ‘Rope List’ grew by a few more Nashville jews today.” Both included swastika symbols.
Funk was targeted after a group of white supremacist, antisemitic and neo-Nazi provocateurs came to Nashville last summer and began livestreaming antics for shock value — waving swastika flags through crowded streets, singing hate songs on the downtown courthouse steps, and even briefly disrupting a Metro Council meeting.
At one point, a fight broke out between a bar worker and a member of the group, who used metal flagpole with a swastika affixed to the top to hit the employee. The group member was charged with aggravated assault. The bar worker was also charged in the tussle.
“Antisemitic hate has no place in Nashville or anywhere, and this verdict shows these hateful threats for what they are: a crime,” Acting U.S. Attorney Robert E. McGuire for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in a news release.
AUSTIN – Texas lawmakers want to help young learners who are lagging behind in math and reading, an early setback that threatens to derail their path to high school graduation.
More than half of third graders in the state are not at grade level in reading or math, meaning they lack the key foundational skills they need to thrive as learners.
Students who are behind in third grade rarely catch up, which can lead to serious consequences later in life. Research shows students who struggle to read by third grade are more likely to drop out of high school. Math proficiency is tied to economic mobility as an adult.
The Texas House gave final approval Wednesday to House Bill 123, which aims to provide struggling students extra learning support as early as kindergarten, before learning gaps compound.
“The whole bill presupposes…there’s nothing wrong with these children, but there was simply something wrong with what we were giving them,” state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, said from the House floor on Tuesday.
Last month, the Senate passed a similar bill, Senate Bill 2252. Members from both chambers are now expected to reconcile differences in their proposals in a closed-door conference committee.
The legislation would require districts to use literacy and numeracy screeners to identify students who are struggling early on. The screeners would assess students three times a year between pre-K and 3rd grade on skills like phonics, vocabulary and spelling. Those who are furthest behind would get extra tutoring in small group settings.
The Texas Education Agency would develop a screener that districts could use for free, though districts would be allowed to continue using their own screening methods.
Students are assessed on school readiness when they first enter kindergarten. After that, the state has limited visibility into literacy development until the third-grade STAAR test, with two dyslexia screenings currently acting as the only formal checkpoints.
“We simply cannot afford to wait past third grade to intervene,” said Amber Shields with the education policy nonprofit Commit Partnership, in testimony before lawmakers last month.
Both the House and Senate bills would require schools to share the screening results with parents. Advocates say the information could improve parent engagement and encourage them to help build their children’s skills after school.
Gabe Grantham, an education policy adviser for the think tank Texas 2036, said the information from the screenings could bridge discrepancies between how students are performing in school and how their parents think they are performing.
The legislation would also expand educators’ access to math and reading instructional materials. Teachers often work unpaid hours to complete training known as math and reading academies, which give them the tools to help build students’ skills in those subjects. HB 123 would give districts funding to pay teachers who take those courses after their regular workday.
The efforts to reduce financial barriers for teachers to take this training come at a time when lawmakers are also trying to limit uncertified teachers from leading classes in foundational skills like math and reading. School districts around the state have increasingly leaned on uncertified teachers to lead classrooms as they’ve struggled to hire and retain trained instructors.
The Texas legislation mimics literacy interventions in Louisiana and Mississippi, states that have made significant leaps in student achievement in recent years. Mississippi fourth-grade reading scores soared — a phenomenon referred to as the Mississippi Miracle — after the state implemented regular literacy screening and provided intensive literacy training to K-3 teachers.
Meanwhile, Texas’ fourth-grade reading scores ranked 37th in the nation, even as students have started to rebound from learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday said he’ll order the Trump administration to provide more information about the terms under which dozens of Venezuelan immigrants are being held at a notorious prison in El Salvador, moving a step closer to deciding whether to require the men to be returned to the United States.
District Court Judge James E. Boasberg said he needed the information to determine whether the roughly 200 men, deported in March under an 18th century wartime law, were still effectively in U.S. custody. Boasberg noted that President Donald Trump had boasted in an interview that he could get back one man wrongly imprisoned in El Salvador in a separate case by simply asking. The government’s lawyer, Abishek Kambli, said that and other public statements by administration officials about their relationship with El Salvador lacked “nuance.”
Kambli would not give Boasberg any information about the administration’s deal with El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, who once called himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and is holding immigrants deported from the U.S. at his country’s CECOT prison. He would not even confirm the terms of the deal, which the White House has said are a $20 million payment to El Salvador.
Boasberg wants the information to establish whether the administration has what’s called “constructive custody” of the immigrants, meaning it could return them if he ordered it. The ACLU has asked that Boasberg order the return of the men, who were accused of being members of a gang Trump claimed was invading the country. Minutes after Trump unveiled his proclamation in March, claiming wartime powers to short-circuit immigration proceedings and remove the men without court hearings, the immigrants were flown to El Salvador.
That happened despite Boasberg’s ruling that the planes needed to be turned around until he could rule on the legality of the move, and he is separately examining whether to hold the government in contempt for that action.
After the March flights, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that no one could be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without a chance to challenge it in court. Since then, three separate federal judges have ruled that Trump’s invocation of the act was illegal because the gang he named is not actually at war with the U.S. It’s likely that those rulings will be appealed all the way back up to the Supreme Court.
Kambli on Wednesday acknowledged that the men deported on the March flights did not get the chance to contest their designation under the Alien Enemies Act, or AEA, as the high court requires. But he argued that Boasberg cannot conclude the United States still has custody of the men. If the U.S. asks for them back, Kambli said, “El Salvador can say ‘No.'”
When it required court hearings for those targeted by the act, the high court also took much of the AEA case away from Boasberg, ruling that immigrants have to contest their removal in the places they’re being detained, not Boasberg’s Washington, D.C., courtroom. Boasberg, who’d blocked removals nationwide initially, has held onto some of the case, including the fate of the men who were first deported.
Trump and some Republican allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama. Those calls prompted a rare statement from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
Boasberg hinted Wednesday he may ultimately require that the deported men receive the due process the high court requires, be it by bringing them back or ordering them moved to another facility, like Guantanamo Bay, fully under U.S. control.
There was also a hint that Boasberg was aware of the way Trump and his supporters have spun the legal decisions in the case. He noted that some in the government have described the initial Supreme Court ruling as a victory in which the court upheld the legality of Trump’s proclamation.
Noting that there was an open line so the public could listen to the hearing, Boasberg read from that ruling, which states explicitly that it does not address the legality of labeling the gang a foreign invader.
“We agree,” Kambli said. “they did not handle that precise issue.”
A federal judge has ruled that a Georgetown scholar’s petition challenging the constitutionality of his arrest should be heard in Virginia, denying the Trump administration’s request to move the case to Texas.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said she would hear arguments in mid-May on whether Badar Khan Suri should be returned to Virginia while his deportation case proceeds in Texas, where he’s now detained. His next hearing in the immigration case is in June.
The judge’s late Tuesday memo says that by swiftly moving Khan Suri from Virginia to Louisiana and then Texas within days of his arrest, the government appeared to be trying to thwart his lawyers’ efforts to challenge his detention in the jurisdiction where it happened.
Khan Suri’s lawyers went to court the day after masked, plain-clothed officers arrested him on the evening of March 17 outside his apartment complex in Arlington, Virginia. Officials said his visa was revoked because of his social media posts and his wife’s connection to Gaza as a Palestinian American. They accused him of supporting Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.
By the time Khan Suri’s petition was filed, authorities had already put him on a plane to Louisiana without allowing him to update his family or lawyer, Khan Suri’s attorneys said. A few days later, he was moved again to Texas.
“This atypical movement would make it difficult for any diligent lawyer’s filings to ’catch up’ to their client’s location,” and followed a pattern now evident in multiple efforts to deport students based on their speech, Giles wrote.
The judge noted that Columbia University scholar Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident with no criminal record who was detained in March over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations was moved within 48 hours of his arrest in Manhattan through lockups in New York, New Jersey, Texas and, then, Louisiana.
She also cited the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was arrested in a Boston suburb, driven New Hampshire and then Vermont, and then flown to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered ICE to return Ozturk to Vermont.
Each scholar “was arrested on different days and in different regions,” Giles wrote. “What is similar? … the Government attempted to move each outside of their jurisdictions to Louisiana or Texas.”
Unlike the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, the courts in Texas and western Louisiana are dominated by Republican-appointed judges, and any appeals go to the reliably conservative 5th Circuit, where 12 of the 17 full-time appellate judges were appointed by Republican presidents, including six by President Donald Trump.
Khan Suri came from India to the U.S. in 2022 on a J-1 visa. A visiting scholar and postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown, he taught a course on majority and minority human rights in South Asia, and lived with his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and three children.
U.S. attorneys argued that Khan Suri was quickly moved because a facility in Farmville, Virginia, was overcrowded and a nearby detention center in Caroline County had “no available beds and only had limited emergency bedspace.”
But the judge observed that for weeks thereafter, Khan Suri had to sleep on a plastic cot on the floor of an overcrowded detention center in Texas, and that according to his attorneys, he now sleeps on a bed in an overcrowded dormitory with about 50 other people. The government’s representations, she wrote, “are plainly inconsistent and are further undermined by the fact that Prairieland Detention Center, where Petitioner (Khan Suri) is currently held, is overcrowded.”
A bill that would make college less affordable for undocumented students, including those who have called the state their home for most of their lives, is advancing in the Texas Senate.
The Senate’s K-16 committee voted 9-2 on Tuesday to bring Senate Bill 1798 to the chamber’s floor for a full vote. It would eliminate undocumented students’ eligibility for in-state tuition and require those previously deemed eligible to pay the difference between in- and out-of-state tuition.
State Sen. Mayes Middleton, who authored the bill, said taxpayers are subsidizing higher education for people in the country illegally, which he estimated cost $150 million in the 2024-2025 academic year.
“These are funds that could have been used for lawful residents, perhaps even to lower tuition and fees,” Middleton said during an April 22 Senate education hearing when the bill was discussed.
The House is contemplating similar legislation. House Bill 232 by state Rep. Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, would require students 18 or older to provide proof that they had applied to become a permanent U.S. resident to be eligible for in-state tuition.
Both bills would also make the students liable for covering the difference between in- and out-of-state tuition should their school determine they had been misclassified or if their application for permanent residency in the U.S. is denied.
The Senate’s measure would go further by allowing universities to withhold a student’s diploma if they don’t pay the difference within 30 days of being notified and if the diploma has not already been granted.
The Senate bill also bars universities and colleges from using any state money on financial aid to help undocumented students, requires them to report students whom they believe have misrepresented their immigration status to the Attorney General’s Office, and ties their state funding to compliance with the law.
Groups that advocate for more restrictions on immigration have expressed support for the Senate’s bill.
“This dismantles one of the many incentive structures that help drive illegal immigration into our state. Certainly not the biggest incentive structure, but one of a plethora,” said Texans for Strong Borders president Chris Russo, who has connections to a white supremacist movement.
Many undocumented students spoke for hours in opposition to both the Senate and the House bills during testimony before lawmakers in recent weeks. They said investing in them has paid dividends for Texas.
Emiliano Valencia, who was brought to the U.S. when he was 2 years old, said paying in-state tuition and working as a bank teller made it possible for him to earn a bachelor’s degree in finance, start a restaurant and later a construction company in the state.
“Altogether, I’ve created over a hundred jobs,” he said. “I’m not an American by paper, but I am in my heart and in my work ethic.”
Out-of-state tuition is typically three times more expensive than in-state tuition.
In 2001, Texas became the first state to extend in-state tuition and grant eligibility to undocumented students. Twenty-three states now offer it, too, although Florida recently repealed its law.
As it stands, Texas law allows undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition if they have lived in the state for three years before graduating from high school and for a year before enrolling in college. They must also sign an affidavit stating they will apply for legal resident status as soon as they can.
These so-called “affidavit students” accounted for only 1.5% of all students enrolled at Texas universities in 2023, said Luis Figueroa, chief of legislative affairs at the liberal think tank Every Texan.
Each new graduating class of “affidavit students” generates $461.3 million to the Texas economy per year, according to the American Immigration Council.
While efforts to eliminate in-state tuition for undocumented students have failed in the Texas Legislature in the past, these bills are concerning because they come at a time when the federal administration has made immigrants public enemy No. 1, said Faye Kolly with the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Kolly submitted written testimony opposing the House’s version of the bill. While it doesn’t explicitly eliminate in-state tuition for undocumented students like the Senate’s version does, both bills would have that effect.
“Just because it gives a glimmer of hope doesn’t mean a vast majority of students are going to be able to meet that criteria,” she said.
Kolly said she included in her written testimony her assessment of a recent executive order from President Donald Trump.
Trump ordered “the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and appropriate agency heads,” to “identify and take appropriate action to stop the enforcement of state and local laws, regulations, policies and practices favoring aliens of any groups of American citizens.” Trump said this included state laws that provide in-state tuition to undocumented students.
Kolly thinks the 2001 Texas Dream Act does not conflict with federal law because it is tied to students’ residency, not their legal immigration status.
“Everyone in Texas qualifies under the same pathway for in-state tuition, and so there isn’t any discrimination against U.S. citizens, and oddly this bill, if it passes, because it does single out people based on their immigration status, might violate federal law,” she said.
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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
AUSTIN (AP) — Six people in a rural Texas county, including two City Council members and a school board trustee, have been indicted in a widening elections investigation led by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, bringing felony charges to a case that Latino rights activists have criticized as politically driven.
The top executive in Frio County, home to about 18,000 residents, a county elections worker and a local resident were also among those indicted on May 1, Paxton said Wednesday. The charges expand an investigation that included raids last year on the homes of Latino campaign volunteers near San Antonio, including an 87-year-old woman, although none of them have been indicted.
Most of the six are charged with what is known in Texas as vote harvesting, a felony that often involves payment for collecting and dropping off other people’s absentee ballots. Several of the officials indicted in Frio County are accused of using Cash App to pay for vote harvesting services.
“The people of Texas deserve fair and honest elections, not backroom deals and political insiders rigging the system. Elected officials who think they can cheat to stay in power will be held accountable,” Paxton said in a statement.
The League of United Latin American Citizens last year called for a federal investigation into Texas authorities after its members’ homes were raided. No charges have been filed against any targets of those searches, according to spokesperson David Cruz, and the organization said it had not made decisions on whether to represent those who were indicted.
Gabriel Rosales, the Texas director for LULAC, called the charges unsubstantiated.
“This is voter suppression 101,” he said. “There’s no vote harvesting going on. There’s nobody creating these ballots. That’s a lie.”
The vote harvesting charges are third-degree felonies and carry up to 10 years in prison. Those accused are Frio County Judge Rochelle Camacho, the county’s top official; Pearsall City Council members Ramiro Trevino and Racheal Garza; Pearsall ISD Trustee Adriann Ramirez; and Frio County resident Rosa Rodriguez.
Another official, former Frio County Elections Administrator Carlos Segura, is charged with tampering with evidence.
“The only word I have right now is that it’s ridiculous,” Segura said. He added that his lawyer advised him not to speak further.
Camacho, Trevino, Garza and Ramirez did not immediately respond to phone calls or an email requesting comment. A number could not be found for Rodriguez.
The indictments were the latest development in an investigation that Paxton started after the 2020 election to root out voter fraud, which is rare and typically occurs in isolated instances. Texas has tightened its voter laws in recent years and increased penalties that Democrats and opponents say are attempts to suppress turnout among Black and Latino voters.
Investigators with the Texas Attorney General’s Office were first told of allegations of vote harvesting by Mary Moore, who was Camacho’s opponent in the March 2022 Democratic primary for county judge, according to search warrant affidavits.
Moore accused Camacho of hiring a woman who had been collecting mail ballots for candidates in Frio County for nearly three decades. Moore alleged that the woman charged candidates anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 to collect mail ballots, applications for ballot by mail and to even drive people to vote curbside, according to the affidavit.
Investigators allege that the vote harvesting scheme targeted elderly people at a Pearsall subdivision. Camacho and Ramirez, who were identified in court documents as sisters, allegedly took part in an effort in October 2022 to gather mail-in ballots from residents there, according to the affidavit.
Investigators allege the woman who was Camacho’s main vote harvester hid ballots underneath her shirt and used different vehicles “to throw off investigators.”
Segura would provide the woman with information on when ballots were mailed and delivered, investigators allege.
A federal appeals court last year upheld the state’s law that tightened voter restrictions and increased penalties for vote harvesting.
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Lozano contributed from Houston. Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Tuesday kept his promise to balance the city’s finances, unveiling a $7 billion budget with no tax increase or new fees for city residents. The city was facing a budget deficit of more than $330 million during Whitmire’s time in office. Whitmire credited department consolidations for eliminating part of the deficit. The city also saved money in a legal agreement that requires the city to invest millions more in streets and drainage — but not all at once. The budget proposal does not factor in potential state money as lawmakers convene in Austin for their legislative session. One contentious bill would give Houston millions more from the Harris County Toll Road Authority.
While the city used METRO dollars to help offset costs incurred as a result of a drainage lawsuit that led to the legal agreement, the city is not using any more METRO dollars to bolster the budget, nor did it get any additional revenue from Harris County, Whitmire’s staff said. “This day is one of the reasons I ran for mayor,” Whitmire said. Whitmire’s 2026 budget is $7 billion, which is 2.3% more than last year’s budget. While the city plans to operate with more money this coming fiscal year, around $74.5 million was cut from the city’s nearly $3 billion general fund, which is bolstered by property and sales taxes. The general fund cuts came from consolidations and Whitmire’s voluntary retirement plan, which was open to all retirement-eligible employees except for police and fire. Whitmire’s team estimated the city would save around $30 million from retirements alone.
SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports that amid President Donald Trump’s chaotic trade war, this much is certain: Business is being put on hold. The question, business leaders say as they scrap profit forecasts for the rest of the year, is how deep a hole they’re sliding into. From San Antonio’s Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. and Rush Enterprises Inc. to Tesla Inc. and Southwest Airlines, executives say there are just too many uncertainties to give investors much guidance. Though the next two or three months promise more of the same, most are hesitant to say what they anticipate beyond that.
“The runway is really short,” Rush Enterprises CEO Rusty Rush said during a recent call with investors. “There’s a lot of haze, a lot of fog … And that’s not just for me, that’s for our customers. I mean, we’re driven by what customers see, what they do, what affects them.” Right now, he said, customers aren’t buying new heavy trucks — the New Braunfels-based commercial vehicle dealer’s bread and butter. Companies aren’t growing or replacing their fleets, Rush said, just replacing vehicles as they break down. That’s happening less often as drivers are putting fewer miles on their rigs as business slows. As imports continue to drop, truckers also have less merchandise and other freight to pick up from ports to drop off at stores, distributors and manufacturers. The uncertainty is being seen this week on Wall Street, too. After breaking a nine-day winning streak Monday, its longest such run in more than 20 years, the S&P 500 fell another 0.8% Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.9% and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.9%.
AUSTIN – Fentanyl test strips are among the cheapest and easiest ways to prevent overdoses, but multiple attempts to legalize them — even with Gov. Greg Abbott’s support in the past — have failed in the Senate. This year, legislation to legalize these test strips faces similar challenges.
“I think that there’s a different stream of thought that feels like if you give an inch, you give a mile, and that any sort of lessening of prohibition stance is sort of giving up and giving over to drug use,” said Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
House Bill 1644, by state Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, would remove testing strips for fentanyl and xylazine, a veterinary sedative also known as “tranq,” from the list of banned drug paraphernalia. This bill passed unanimously in the House last month and is now pending in the Senate.
Fentanyl, a potent drug commonly mixed with other substances and has caused the deaths of more than 7,000 Texans in the last six years, is odorless and tasteless, making detection nearly impossible without specialized equipment.
This is why Oliverson called fentanyl testing strips a “mine detector” for a person trying to walk across a minefield.
The cost of fentanyl test strips can range from $10 to $30 for a box of 30. To use the strips, testers dissolve a small amount of a drug in water and then dip the strip into it. One line indicates fentanyl is present, and two lines indicate a negative result.
This is the second legislative session in a row that Oliverson has tried to get his bill passed. Both times, his legislation didn’t get a committee hearing in the Senate. With less than four weeks left in the legislative session, his bill this session hasn’t yet been considered in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
Oliverson, in his speech from the House floor, suggested that Senate lawmakers fear that legalizing the strips would mean that people would start “using drugs to their heart’s content safely.”
“I want every person in Texas who is struggling with addiction to get the help they need. But I can’t fix that if they are dead,” Oliverson told lawmakers last month when his bill passed.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Senate, did not return a request for comment nor did the criminal justice committee chair, Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton. Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, credited by drug policy advocates last legislative session for blocking fentanyl testing strips from a hearing, didn’t comment on whether she supports legalization.
“The structural nature of the Senate, where the lieutenant governor has the power to decide whether a bill gets a hearing or not, can be quite a big hurdle,” Harris said.
Travis County Judge Andy Brown said the delay in legalizing fentanyl testing strips is only costing lives with each passing year.
“Our fight against the number one cause of accidental death in Travis County is hampered by the fact that we haven’t legalized fentanyl test strips in Texas,” Brown said.
Early last year, a rash of over 70 overdoses rocked Travis County in a span of three days, killing more than nine people. However, more deaths could have occurred if the county and the state hadn’t made efforts to get overdose reversal drugs like Narcan and naloxone to the general public last legislative session.
To combat the growing number of fentanyl overdose deaths in Texas, state lawmakers in 2023 launched a $10 million fentanyl awareness campaign and plan to distribute doses of Narcan to every county in the state.
“I also get the sense that publicity campaigns that we have done and that the state has done have helped get the education out there, too,” Brown said.
Brown said Travis County, despite the harrowing encounter last year, saw a decline in fentanyl related deaths, dropping by 36%, from 279 in 2023 to 179 in 2024.
During this same period, deaths from fentanyl overdose statewide dropped 14%, to 5,070 in 2024.
“We don’t know yet if this is a long-term decline. Certainly, it’s an encouraging development that we hope to see continue,” Harris said, pointing out that 87,000 deaths are still a lot.
A dip doesn’t mean a complete decline as the drug market is unpredictable. This is why drug policy advocates and others are clamoring for the legalization of drug testing strips, which are cheaper to stock than Narcan and can keep someone from using fentanyl in the first place.
In December 2022, Abbott announced his support for fentanyl testing strips as he believed the opioid crisis had gone too far. Attempts to contact Abbott to see if he still supports testing strips were not returned. Abbott did not respond to a request for comment on whether he still supports legalization.
“I think we would reduce the number of deaths that we’re seeing in the state of Texas if we just made test strips legal,” Brown said.
Maggie Luna, executive director of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, an Austin-based nonprofit that does outreach and operates a drop-in center for people who might need Narcan, condoms, bandages, and more, has seen firsthand the demand for fentanyl testing strips.
Their organization can’t legally buy testing strips but accepts tests donated to them from other states.
“People are always asking for fentanyl testing strips and xylazine test strips,” Luna said.
The Texas Harm Reduction Alliance has been on the front-lines of this fight against drug-related deaths, reversing more than 300 overdoses in 2024 alone with Narcan, Luna said.
If fentanyl use continues, Luna is concerned about it worsening because of federal funding cuts to substance abuse programs, Texas lawmakers’ attempt to ban intoxicating substances like hemp and kratom, and the economic downturn, which notoriously leads to spikes in drug usage.
“We are going to start seeing people seeking drugs at the same time we are clawing back the money that we have for tools to keep people alive,” Luna said. “We are heading to a period of death.”
Luna said legalizing test strips allows organizations like hers, which face an uncertain future, a cheap option to save lives.
“Every overdose can be reversed if we are applying the right education and giving out the correct tools,” Luna said.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
NEW YORK (AP) — Police in New York City are investigating whether the department violated policy by sharing a report with federal immigration authorities that included a record of a Palestinian woman’s sealed arrest. The report was generated by the NYPD in response to a federal request for information about Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman living in New Jersey. While federal authorities said they were investigating Kordia for criminal money laundering, the record is now being used as evidence in civil deportation case. The city’s police commissioner said an internal investigation into the information-sharing was underway. Kordia remains in a Texas immigration jail.