Texas AG Ken Paxton sues county over program that helps migrants obtain lawyers

Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Harris County — home to Houston — for using county funds for programs that help migrants facing deportation obtain access to legal support.

Harris County established the Immigrant Legal Services Fund program in 2020, sending money to five organizations that help migrants facing deportation obtain lawyers.

Last month, the county appropriated an additional $1.3 million to support the program.

Paxton said in a statement that the program is “evil and wicked,” as well as unconstitutional.

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“We must stop the left-wing radicals who are robbing Texans to prevent illegals from being deported by the Trump Administration,” Paxton said. “Beyond just being blatantly unconstitutional, this is evil and wicked. Millions upon millions of illegals invaded America during the last administration, and they must be sent back to where they came from.”

This is one of several recent lawsuits filed by Paxton targeting organizations that support migrants.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, rebuked Paxton’s latest lawsuit, affirming that the program is “perfectly legal” and that his office would fight back against the lawsuit in court.

“This lawsuit is a cheap political stunt,” he said in a statement. “At a time when the president has unleashed ICE agents to terrorize immigrant neighborhoods, deport U.S. citizens, and trample the law, it’s shameful that Republican state officials are joining in instead of standing up for Texans.”

The Harris County Jail leads the nation in ICE detainers, according to The Texas Tribune, as federal and state officials seek to continue to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Before the county started the Immigrant Legal Services Fund in 2020, it was the largest county in the country without a program to help migrants get access to legal counsel, The Texas Tribune noted. The county passed the program on a party-line vote.

“When you have a family at a deportation hearing and they don’t have an attorney, they’re deported at a much higher rate, like 90% of the time, compared to like 5% of the time when they do have an attorney,” county Judge Lina Hidalgo, who proposed the program, said at the time, according to the Houston Chronicle.

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In the lawsuit, Paxton claims that the programs “serve no public purpose and instead constitute unconstitutional grants of public funds to private entities to subsidize individual deportation defenses.” He asked the court to block the county from distributing funds to these organizations and prohibit it from sending the money to the groups in the future.

Last month, after the vote to allocate funding for the program, Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis said the funding was needed because of the uptick in raids targeting migrants, according to the Houston Chronicle.

“Having access to legal representation not only improves case outcomes but helps keep families together,” he said in a statement. “In a county as diverse as ours, local government must step up to safeguard safety, justice, and the people we serve.”