Holly Hansen - Reporter, The Texan Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Offus, So get yourself a good lawyer, but be prepared
to pay for it yourself. Holly Hansen joins us. She's
a reporter at the Texan Sanctuary Cities Sanctuary Counties. They're
not legal in Texas, but evidently, Holly, there's still some
jurisdictions out there. They're spending taxpayer money on defending illegals
or going through the deportation process. Do I really have

(00:21):
to ask who they are? Is it the usual suspects?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think you can probably guess. But Harris County, of course,
is one of those. They created a fund in twenty
twenty under the direction of County Judge Leen and Hidalgo.
The county has since spent about four million dollars to
defend these illegal immigrants who are facing deportation. County taxpayers
are providing that legal defense for them. Harris County is

(00:48):
part of something called the Safe Network. It's a national
network established through the Vera Institute for Justice, and Bear
County is also a part, as well as the City
of Austin and Dallas. The interesting thing about that network
is to participate, these entities have to promise to provide

(01:09):
legal services to these illegal immigrants. Regardless of their criminal history,
so they were not supposed to take that into consideration.
And you know, Harris County has been trying to provide
more services for illegal immigrants, although as you noted, sanctuary
counties and sanctuary cities are not allowed in the state

(01:31):
of Texas. They did try to see if they could
make that guaranteed basic income program available to illegal immigrants,
where the county was planning to give those stipends every month.
But we do have one state Rep. Who's taking a
look at this. He has filed legislation to ban that.
That is State Rep. Giovanni Capriglioni out of the Dallas

(01:53):
Fort Worth area, and he'd like to say that very
specifically to these entities. No, we're not going to give
taxpayer dollars to provide this legal defense, especially in light
of the fact that we've got a new president coming in.
President Trump has promised to start working on deportations of
some of these individuals, and apparently taxpayers are going to

(02:17):
be fighting those efforts from the get go, and some
of our own taxas jurisdictions.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I'll tell you what, that gets to be expensive, doesn't it.
If you start deporting a bunch of people from Harris County,
and Harris County is paying for their attorneys. We're going
to be spending on a lot more than the four
million dollars we evidently have already spent. All right, Here's
what I wonder, Holly Hanson, And of course I say
this about every law we pass here the great state
of Texas, is can we pass something specifically that these

(02:44):
Democrat run jurisdictions, these sanctuary jurisdictions can't get a work around.
In other words, can we be specific enough where we
can make sure that we stop the practice.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
That's a great question, and I think that's an ongoing question.
A lot of our laws get passed in the state
of Texas without a lot of enforcement mechanisms. And as
you noted, they have legal teams in Harris County and
elsewhere where they look for loopholes and these laws. They've
found some loopholes in the law that says the county

(03:15):
can't defund the police. They have found loopholes. They think
in this apparent law that they can't provide that guaranteed
basic income program that is still winding its way through
the courts. We may have a decision as soon as
this month. But they're very strategic in trying to find
the ways around the laws that our lawmakers are trying

(03:37):
to pass and crack down on these uses of taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yep. And so far they've been very good at it. Holly,
thanks for joinings. Appreciate it. Reporter with the Texans, Holly
Hanson