TEXAS – During a Fox News appearance earlier in November, a former Homeland Security official claimed the state of Texas could be on its way to joining the ranks of the “sanctuary state club,” pointing to state and local officials across the Lone Star State who are coming into office this upcoming January who’ve openly supported dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Todd Bensman, a current senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former senior advisor to Homeland Security, asserted during a Fox News interview earlier in November that the state of Texas could be on a path to becoming the next California or New York in terms of adopting a de facto sanctuary state model.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire has already instructed the chief of police in his city to limit cooperation with ICE in the wake of the midterm upset as of November 6, a mere two days following an election cycle that effectively turned the Republican stronghold blue.
Highlighting the massive shift in political power in The Lone Star State, Bensman stated, “The new crop of elected officials that are coming in to take over the state of Texas all voted against any sort of border security by the state, any involvement down there at the border, Operation Lone Star.”
Bensman suspects that the move by Houston’s mayor is a simple reaction to the new political powers coming into office across Texas in January, predicting other cities will “fall like dominoes.”
“That's what led the mayor of Houston to sort of take a big step back from participating with ICE. And now we're starting to see other cities fall like dominoes. Austin, San Antonio are following suit. And it's going to go on like that. Texas is kind of sliding towards the sanctuary state club,” Bensman stated.
With the highest political offices in Texas having swung Democrat in the midterms, from the governor’s office to the attorney general, Bensman claims the already liberal-leaning cities in Texas are shifting their policies before anyone officially takes office since their cities were ostensibly pivotal in these candidates winning their elections.
“There is a state law that was passed last year that requires Texas…law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE and to help them make arrests on their own. The new attorney general, the guy that's taking over Ken Paxton, is saying, I don't think I'm going to enforce that law. And the lieutenant governor is saying, I don't think I'm going to enforce a sanctuary ban law that they also passed. They're hearing this, and these are blue cities that voted for them, and they didn't like doing this anyway,” Bensman claimed.
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