(Texas Tribune) — Four years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would be the first state to build its own border wall, lawmakers have quietly stopped funding the project, leaving only scattered segments covering a small fraction of the border.
That decision, made in the waning hours of this year’s legislative session, leaves the future of the state wall unclear. Just 8% of the 805 miles the state identified for construction is complete, which has cost taxpayers more than $3 billion to date. The Texas Tribune reported last year that the wall is full of gaps that migrants and smugglers can easily walk around and mostly concentrated on sprawling ranches in rural areas, where illegal border crossings are less likely to occur.
RELATED As landowners resist, Texas’ border wall is fragmented and built in remote areas
State leaders suggested the federal government could pick up the effort. However, during President Donald Trump’s first term, when wall building was his top priority, his administration completed just 21 miles in Texas — about a third of what the state was able to build over the past four years.
The Tribune reported last year that the state’s wall program would take around 30 years and more than $20 billion to complete.
In early June, lawmakers finalized the state budget, approving $3.4 billion for ongoing border security efforts.
State Sen. Joan Huffman, the state’s lead budget writer, confirmed to The Texas Tribune on Thursday that none of that money will go toward the wall. Instead, the funds will flow largely to the Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard, the agencies tasked with apprehending migrants under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
“It’s not that we don’t think it’s an ongoing need to secure the border,” said Huffman, R-Houston. “It should have always been a function of the federal government, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really being done.”
Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s spokesman, said in a statement that the Trump administration’s work to secure the southern border have allowed the state to adjust its own efforts. He did not specifically comment on the border wall program, but said the military and public safety departments would carry on their border-related missions.
“Texas will continue to maintain a robust presence with our federal partners to arrest, jail, and deport illegal immigrants,” Mahaleris said.
Along the Texas-Mexico border, the state has built 65 miles of wall. Some of the border is naturally uncrossable or already covered with spans of federal wall.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who controls the Senate, did not respond to an interview request.
In the end, the Republicans who control the Legislature defunded the wall without any public debate.
The Texas Facilities Commission, the state agency in charge of building the wall, said as recently as January that its objective was to build at least 100 miles of wall by the end of 2026.
But it doesn’t have the money to do so.
The wall program project manager in April reported that of the Legislature’s $3 billion in funding from previous years, there was only enough left to complete 83 miles. The state has completed 65 miles. Work will continue on segments under construction but no new projects will begin, state officials said.
Texas Facilities Commission Executive Director Mike Novak did not respond to an interview request.
The Texas border wall has been a signature policy achievement touted by Abbott, who launched an expensive border crack down during the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden. He held multiple press events in recent years, touting construction of the 30-foot high wall — which costs about $28 million per mile to build.
Early in its construction, he asked for donations to support the wall building on the governor’s official website, raising more than $55 million. The crowd fund link was removed sometime after May 29, according to a review of the website’s archival history.
The state keeps wall locations secret. But an investigation by the Tribune last year found that it is not a contiguous structure, but dozens of fragmented sections scattered across the six counties between Del Rio and Brownsville.
The Tribune also found the program has been hamstrung by landowners on the border who have refused to let the state build wall on their property. Almost all of the Texas land that abuts the Rio Grande is privately owned, and the Legislature prohibited the use of eminent domain for the wall. In November, the program manager reported that a third of landowners approached said they were not interested in having the wall on their land.
A Republican state senator filed a bill to allow the state to use eminent domain to seize land for the wall this past session, however, it died in committee.
As a result of landowner resistance, construction appeared to be driven by where the state could acquire land rather than where it would be most effective, border security experts who reviewed the wall locations said. Most of the wall segments built have been on ranches in rural areas, where the experts said barriers would be most useful in urban areas, where people illegally crossing could easily disappear into buildings or vehicles.
Holdouts have continued to be an obstacle, program documents show. As of March, 24% of property owners the state approached declined to host wall on their land, accounting for 41 miles of wall route the state wanted to obtain.
The federal government’s plans to continue building the wall remain unclear. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Trump has signaled deporting undocumented immigrants is a higher priority of his second administration than building physical border barriers, once his signature campaign promise when he first sought the White House in 2016.
In March, his administration awarded the first wall contract of his second term to a company to build seven miles in Hidalgo County, in the Rio Grande Valley.
ALSO SEE Trump praises Abbott at inauguration, promises to militarize border and build wall
The Department of Homeland Security, under Democratic and Republican presidents, has used eminent domain to seize land for border wall. But that process, which involves taking landowners to court, often takes more than two years to complete.
Illegal border crossings peaked at the end of 2023 and have declined since, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. There have been fewer than 13,000 monthly crossings since February, down more than 90% from their height two years ago.
Questions about the efficacy and cost benefit of building an exorbitantly expensive state wall have been raised by Republican lawmakers in recent years.
Before he voted in favor of $1.5 billion for the wall in 2023, Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, wondered aloud whether the Legislature was “spending a whole lot of money to give the appearance of doing something rather than taking the problem on to actually solve it.”
Discussing the same bill, Republican Sen. Charles Perry of Lubbock likened spending endless money on border infrastructure to being on a hamster wheel.
“At some point this state must draw a line in the sand,” Perry said.
_____
Graphics by Yuriko Schumacher
