Without any announcement or open debate, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passed a biennial state budget that will effectively halve the amount dedicated to its multi-billion-dollar border security operations—from a proposed $6.5 billion down to about $3.4 billion.
This marks the first time that GOP lawmakers have pulled back on their border security spending since Governor Rick Perry inaugurated state operations in the 2000s and Governor Greg Abbott supercharged them with the 2021 launch of Operation Lone Star (OLS). Still, that $3.4-billion level remains four times higher than the $800 million that Texas budgeted prior to OLS.
While the significant spending slash was a surprise decision that emerged in final negotiations by state House and Senate budget writers, it was not entirely unexpected.
Ahead of the 2025 legislative session, Abbott (and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick) had hinted that he might roll back the state’s border once incoming President Donald Trump was able to initiate his promised crackdown. But, for almost the entirety of the session, Republican lawmakers pressed forward with a budget that kept Operation Lone Star (OLS) fully funded with $6.5 billion divvied up among a handful of agencies—namely the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Military Department, the governor’s office, and the state emergency management agency.
Throughout the session, the governor was lobbying Trump and the GOP Congress in Washington, D.C., to reimburse Texas for the more than $11 billion in state funds spent on its sprawling border schemes—which have included a surge of National Guard deployments, a criminal arrest dragnet targeting migrants, the busing of tens of thousand of asylum-seekers out of state to Democratic cities, and the building of Trump-style border wall.
Last summer, the state wound down its busing program, and this spring it shuttered one of its temporary detention centers after arrests of migrants in the border region had trickled nearly to a stop. Abbott credited the ability to close that facility in Jim Hogg County to the Trump administration, though records showed that it had been processing very few migrants for many months while Biden was still president. In early April, state police and National Guard soldiers pulled out of Shelby Park on the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, which they had occupied and used as a stage for border security theater for well over a year.
The brunt of the OLS spending cuts for 2026-27 come from the governor’s office, amounting to $2.7 billion, according to budget documents, leaving just around $230 million of the amount originally requested by the governor. Abbott’s office has controlled billions in OLS funding for local grants, state border wall, migrant busing, and the private contracting of migrant temporary detention centers used to process migrants arrested by state and local police. These have in turn helped fuel a private contracting bonanza, which has proven lucrative for both contractors and Abbott’s campaign coffers.
The budget cuts largely target Abbott’s border wall construction program, for which future funding appears to be zeroed out or close to it. GOP state Senator Joan Huffman previously told the Houston Chronicle that most of the cuts are for the border wall. Huffman said Abbott did not push back on the cuts: “It seemed appropriate to reduce the state funding in a way where we still have a presence, we could assist the feds on their operations, but it just didn’t take quite the same amount of state resources,” Huffman said..
Abbott first announced his plans for the state to continue building Trump’s border wall in several Texas border counties back in 2021, directing the Texas Facilities Commission (TFC) to oversee the program, with an aim to build several hundred miles of fencing. Since then, the state has allocated about $3.1 billion for construction of the wall. As of mid-April, contractors had completed 61.8 miles of wall segments across six different counties, and the state had acquired easement rights to nearly 20 additional miles, TFC executive director Mike Novak said at the agency’s most recent meeting in April. With current funding, Novak said “we’re in a position to build up to approximately 85 miles.”
Asked about the cuts to the border wall construction program, TFC referred the Observer to the governor’s office. “TFC has no knowledge on the future of the [border wall] program,” the agency’s spokesperson said in a statement. The governor’s press office did not respond to the Observer’s emails requesting comment.
At that meeting, Novak acknowledged that the wall program’s future was dependent on both the state and the Trump administration. “We’re sort of at an intersection right now of both state and federal policy spending decisions, which are pending,” he said in April. “As those policy decisions are made, we are standing by and ready to move forward accordingly. Whatever policies come out in the upcoming weeks and months, we’ll use whatever guidance given.”
The state has spent anywhere from $20 million a mile to over $30 million a mile, depending on the location and terrain (comparable to what Trump spent in his first term)—and at times has run over budget. Texas is not allowed to use eminent domain to secure private land rights to build its wall and, due to landowner resistance in many areas, has often resorted to building fragmented segments in far-flung locations—including on the land of wealthy ranchers, some being allies of the governor.
So far, the state has spent about $34 million on easement rights for dozens of parcels along the border—including several $1 million-dollar-plus transactions involving large ranches—state records and prior Observer reporting has shown.
TFC has estimated that it will cost as much as $500,000 per mile to maintain the wall it’s already built, along with the adjoining patrol roads, lighting, and other infrastructure. Funding for that ongoing maintenance was also cut from the Texas budget. During his recent push for federal reimbursement from Washington, Abbott has floated the idea of transferring the state’s land rights and border wall to the federal government. The state’s easements with private landowners include a clause allowing Texas to transfer control of the property and wall to the feds.
The U.S. House budget bill—aka Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”—was recently passed with $12 billion for state reimbursements for border security, as well as an astronomical $46.5 billion for federal border wall and “river barriers” likely akin to Abbott’s controversial buoys. The U.S. Senate is still considering the budgetary proposal.
The other big OLS cut is $500 million to the Texas Military Department, though the agency still has a total of $1.7 billion for border security—enough to retain much of its large soldier deployment on the border. (Last year, the Military Department built a permanent military base outside Eagle Pass that can house up to 1,800 soldiers.)
Abbott’s office told the Houston Chronicle that any TMD reductions in deployment will be supplanted by troops sent by Trump and that “total border security posture will remain at similar levels.”
Untouched by the OLS cuts is the Texas Department of Public Safety, the massive state police agency that has effectively directed all facets of OLS since it began—and has dramatically expanded its technology and surveillance capabilities via the state’s border security windfall. Its $1.2 billion allocation for border security appears to have remained untouched, budget documents show.
Meanwhile, the governor’s office still has plenty of money to play with for his border operation. Much of it will continue to flow to local counties to subsidize their own law enforcement efforts related to OLS.
Among the finer print, Abbott and the GOP budget-writers were kind enough to include a $1 million line-item to reimburse the City of Eagle Pass for the costs incurred by the year-plus military occupation of Shelby Park.
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