The new Texas governor-elect, Gina Hinojosa, is and has been an open-borders activist with a long record of bitterly opposing any and all border security measures, and she will likely take every action she can to that effect when she assumes office. That could include scaling back state-led border enforcement operations and limiting discretionary cooperation with Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), although existing Texas law would constrain how far she could go.
Fox News' Bill Melugin paints an uncomfortable picture on this matter.
Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night. Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one. Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas. Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a “dog and pony show” and “political theater”. Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott’s orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance, except for some horseback agents who were falsely slandered for “whipping”. Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump’s border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) November 4, 2026
The article bears reading in full, but here's the nub:
Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.
Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a “dog and pony show” and “political theater”.
It's a fair point. There are some measures she won't be able to simply handwave away, though: items passed by the Texas legislature and signed into law. Those include SB 4, signed in December 2023, which makes illegal entry or re-entry into Texas from another country a state crime and authorizes state judges to order removal. After extensive litigation, the law was allowed to take effect in May 2026, although its constitutionality remains under challenge. There are others, like SB3, which authorized spending $1.54 billion on border operations and building barriers, along with several other similar bills.
This still leaves the new governor with considerable authority over Texas law enforcement and their cooperation with federal law enforcement.
As Mr. Melugin also points out, things could get worse.
Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump’s border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.
How many Texans, do you suppose, voted for this? How many will stand idly by, nodding with approval, as thousands, or millions, of illegal aliens once more swarm our borders, with the tacit assistance of the governor of the largest state on our southern border, the state that includes by far the longest stretch of that border? That remains to be seen; but the new governor will have four years in which to test their patience.
The caravans are already forming up.