Duarte’s story highlights the human cost of deportation and how long-standing, deeply integrated immigrant families are affected by rigid enforcement policies. His case resonated across the border region, blending sorrow…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Harris County for allocating county funds to programs that help undocumented people get access to legal support.
The county, home to Houston, created the Immigrant Legal Services Fund program in 2020 and last month appropriated an additional $1.3 million to keep it going. The program sends funds to five organizations that help people facing deportation get lawyers.
In a statement, Paxton called the program “evil and wicked,” as well as unconstitutional. This is the latest in a flurry of headline-grabbing lawsuits filed by Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, aimed at organizations that support immigrants.
The Harris County Jail leads the nation in ICE detainers — a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to hold a person for deportation — as federal and state immigration enforcement has kicked into high gear under President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit was filed in Harris County District Court. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said in a statement that the program was “perfectly legal” and his office would defend it in court.
“This lawsuit is a cheap political stunt,” he said. “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 background: When Harris County started the Immigrant Legal Services Fund in 2020, it was the largest county in the United States without a program aimed at helping undocumented immigrants get legal counsel. Austin, Dallas and San Antonio already had similar programs.
County Judge Lina Hidalgo proposed the program, which passed 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 percent of the time, compared to like 5 percent of the time when they do have an attorney,” Hidalgo said at the time, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The program sends county dollars to five organizations: BakerRipley, the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Justice for All Immigrants, KIND, Inc. and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service.
Why Texas is suing: Paxton argues in the lawsuit that these programs “serve no public purpose and instead constitute unconstitutional grants of public funds to private entities to subsidize individual deportation defenses.”
He is asking the judge to stop Harris County from disbursing funds to these organizations immediately, and bar them from doing so in the future.
Paxton has filed similar lawsuits against the cities of Austin and San Antonio over their support of nonprofit organizations that help Texans access abortions. In June, the 15th Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, blocking San Antonio from using the funds the city had allocated to potentially help people who needed to travel out of the state for abortions.
What Harris County says: Menefee said his office would “fight back” against this lawsuit, calling it a “cheap political stunt.”
After the October vote to allocate funding for the legal defense program, Commissioner Rodney Ellis said in a statement that it was necessary because of the increase in immigration raids.
“Having access to legal representation not only improves case outcomes but helps keep families together,” he said in a statement, according to the Houston Chronicle. “In a county as diverse as ours, local government must step up to safeguard safety, justice, and the people we serve.”