OPINION: The Next Border Crisis -- What Happens Along the Rio Grande Under Texas Democrat Leadership

Breitbart Texas stood on the banks of the Rio Grande for more than a decade, chronicling the battle against open borders and transnational cartels. Throughout that entire fight, one constant remained: Texas stood as an immovable operational wall and courtroom vanguard against federal abdication. When Washington bureaucrats refused to enforce immigration law, Texas deployed the National Guard and state troopers, laid down miles of razor wire, built its own border wall, and enacted landmark enforcement statutes like Senate Bill 4 to protect its communities. That entire perimeter was shattered on November 3. With urban turnout sweeping Austin-based progressive State Legislator Gina Hinojosa into the Governor’s Mansion, alongside incoming Lieutenant Governor Vikki Goodwin and Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson, Texas’s executive machinery has flipped into Democratic hands for the first time in over three decades. To cement the shift, Democrats swept the Texas House. Members announced this week they will install 87-year-old Houston Democrat Senfronia Thompson in the Speaker’s chair. The establishment media is already running interference. They are fawning over historic firsts and obsessing over quirky trivia—like Nathan Johnson’s past work composing music for Dragon Ball Z—to distract the public from what’s happening on the ground. Behind the progressive talking points about “inter-agency coordination” and dismissing physical barriers as “political theater,” the left appears to be preparing a coordinated strategy to dismantle the Texas border firewall from within. Disarming the Front Lines: Gutting Operation Lone Star Operation Lone Star didn’t happen by accident. It exists because Governor Greg Abbott used statutory emergency powers under the Texas Disaster Act to deploy Texas Military Department soldiers and airmen to the border, unleash the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to arrest cartel-smuggled trespassers, and direct state resources to plug the gaps left open by the federal government during the Biden Border Crisis. Governor-elect Hinojosa has made her agenda no secret. She has repeatedly attacked border security spending, calling physical barriers, razor wire, and military deployments a waste of money and mere “political theater.” As commander-in-chief of the Texas Military Department, Hinojosa doesn’t need legislative permission to cripple border enforcement. With a stroke of her pen, she can terminate the border disaster declarations, stand down the National Guard, pull troops out of forward operating bases in Eagle Pass and Del Rio, and remove the concertina wire along Shelby Park. Replacing kinetic interdiction with “streamlined federal coordination” is Washington-speak for surrender. It means stepping back and allowing the same federal administrative state that orchestrated the border crisis to dictate the future of what happens along our 1,254-mile border with Mexico. The Legislative Chokepoint: The House Gavel Any hope that the Texas House would check Hinojosa’s executive branch evaporated on election night. With Democrats taking control of the lower chamber for the first time since 2003, Speaker-in-waiting Senfronia Thompson now holds the gavel. With nine seats still up for grabs, Thompson will lead a solid majority of State House Democrats. Capitol insiders quickly praised Thompson as a veteran institutionalist. But make no mistake about the legislative reality: the border security pipeline in the House is effectively dead. Thompson and her committee chairs are not likely to advance border wall funding, nor are they likely to take up bills to enhance state felony charges against human smugglers and cartel stash-house operators. Instead, House leadership is expected to work with Hinojosa to raid dedicated border security appropriations, siphoning taxpayer dollars from public safety and redirecting them into progressive municipal grants and social programs. Courtroom Capitulation: The AG Office Stands Down While Hinojosa pulls back the troops and Thompson starves the budget, the operational collapse will be cemented inside the Texas Attorney General’s office. For thirty years, the Texas AG served as the premier legal shield against federal overreach, asserting state sovereignty under Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution to stop illegal migration. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court underscored the importance of that fight in Mullin v. Center for Biological Diversity (Docket No. 26A560), handing down an 8–1 order that struck down an activist federal judge’s injunction to let border wall construction resume in the Big Bend sector, Breitbart Texas’s Randy Clark reported. That aggressive courtroom posture will disappear the moment Nathan Johnson takes the oath of office. A hostile AG doesn’t need to repeal conservative laws like SB 4 to nullify them; he can simply engage in “enforcement by omission.” When radical open-border NGOs sue Texas, an activist AG can refuse to defend state statutes in the Fifth Circuit, decline to petition the Supreme Court for emergency stays, or enter into collusive consent decrees that permanently tie the hands of Texas state troopers. Worse, county sheriffs across South Texas who routinely honor ICE detainers should prepare for administrative lawfare. An activist AG can issue formal Attorney General Opinions claiming local ICE cooperation creates civil rights liability—manufacturing sanctuary policies across Texas by bureaucratic fiat. The Last Redoubt: Texas Senate Must Build a Firewall With the executive triad in Democratic hands and Thompson controlling the House floor, only one institutional barrier stands between Texas and California-style open-borders chaos: the Republican-led Texas Senate. Republicans hold a 19–12 majority in the upper chamber. They hold the constitutional authority, and they must use it decisively: Strip Vikki Goodwin of Administrative Control: The Texas Constitution designates the Lieutenant Governor as the presiding officer of the Senate, but the real power—appointing committee chairs, referring legislation, and setting the floor calendar—comes entirely from chamber rules. On Day One, the 19 Republican senators must exercise their majority under Article III, Section 11 to create a formal Senate Majority Leader or empower an executive committee. Vikki Goodwin must not be allowed to bury conservative border legislation or appoint liberal chairs to run the jurisprudence committees. Defend the 19-Vote Threshold: Republicans must reject any procedural trap that reverts the “blocker bill” intent calendar to the traditional two-thirds rule (21 votes). Keeping the threshold at three-fifths (19 votes) ensures the Republican caucus can bring critical legislation to the floor without giving the 12-member Democratic minority an absolute veto. Fence Border Funding and Authorize Independent Counsel: The Senate must use its power of the purse to strictly fence border appropriations so the executive branch cannot divert law enforcement funding. More importantly, lawmakers must pass legislation granting independent legislative counsel the statutory authority to intervene in federal court to defend Texas border statutes whenever the Attorney General abandons his duty. The Bottom Line For decades, Texans built a state capable of standing tall against federal neglect and securing its own sovereign territory. The November election handed the keys of that machinery to an Austin-Houston progressive coalition eager to dismantle it piece by piece. Senate Republicans hold an ironclad 19-vote majority. They must use that hammer immediately to control the chamber, defend border appropriations, and insulate our state laws from administrative surrender. If the Senate blinks, the border will not just open in Del Rio or Eagle Pass—the front door to Texas will be swung wide open from the Capitol itself. Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team, established in January 2014. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday morning talk show. He also serves as president of Blue Wonder Gun Care Products.