The "money for Texas" amendment: GOP budget could reward Greg Abbott for MAGA border stunts

Congressional Republicans slipped a provision into their budget passed Thursday that would hand out billions of dollars to pay for things like Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s immigrant busing initiative and state-funded border wall.

An amendment to the House budget, passed Wednesday night, sets aside $12 billion for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to allocate to states, specifically to pay for programs the Trump administration considers supportive of its border security mission. The provision makes the money available to reimburse states for any costs related to aiding the effort "to enforce the immigration laws, including through detention and removal, and to combat the unlawful entry of persons and contraband."

Under the provision, states would be able to obtain compensation for immigration-related activities dating back to January 2021, when former President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

But there’s a catch: The amendment to the bill also says that the secretary of Homeland Security cannot grant the money to any state that has received reimbursement under any other grant program managed by the department.

In practical terms, this prohibition targets FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, a program created in order to help state and local governments as well as humanitarian groups pay for any costs associated with receiving immigrants while they await the outcome of their court proceedings. These costs can include anything from food, shelter, transportation, medical care or personal hygiene supplies.

In effect, this language in the bill means that states like Texas, Florida and South Dakota can apply to receive funding for actions decried as political stunts, like Abbot’s busing of immigrants to cities like New York, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ flights of immigrants to California or Noem’s own decision to send national guard troops to the southern border as South Dakota governor.

“Greg Abbott has been asking Congress to do this, and we've seen multiple GOP members of Congress request this funding. So this is, by and large, money for Texas,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told Salon.

Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, likewise noted in an analysis of the bill that the $12 billion provision appears largely being aimed at reimbursing Texas for its immigrant busing program, which cost the state roughly $1,900 per seat, as well as the state's other border initiatives, which included physically pushing immigrants back across the border and installing razor wire in the Rio Grande.

WOLA approximated that the funding is comparable to the Head Start preschool program for low-income families or 22 times the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS.

Republicans also larded up their budget bill with huge funding for ICE, enough to make it the best-funded federal law enforcement agency ever, as well as numerous provisions aimed at making navigating the immigration process more expensive and more difficult for immigrants. In terms of top-line numbers, Republicans allocated $15 billion to ICE for deportations, $16.2 billion for hiring new ICE agents, $46.5 billion for building barriers across the border and $45 billion for adult and family detention.

For example, the budget would require immigrants to pay a $1,000 minimum application fee to apply for asylum and a $500 fee for applying for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, applications which are currently free. For immigrants in ICE detention, who earn about $1 dollar a day, this would mean it would take nearly three years for them to earn enough money to apply for asylum.

The bill also includes a provision imposing a $100 fee for immigrants who request additional time in immigration proceedings to obtain a lawyer, which only compounds the difficulties standing in immigrants' way in terms of finding legal counsel for their immigration proceedings.

“This puts a monetary price on defending yourself in court and seeking humanitarian protection,” Reichlin-Melnick told Salon. “It overcharges people for the right to defend themselves in court.”