On Tuesday after a day of delays, the Border Protection Unit Act (the most extensive and well-rounded piece of Border Security legislation to touch the Texas legislature, or any state legislature for that matter) made its way to the House floor.
Per House Rules, Speaker Dade Phelan is given the first twenty bill numbers to designate as priority items. With this deadline in mind, HB 20 by State Representative Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) was one of the first twenty bills filed, deeming it a priority of the Speaker of the House and the Texas House of Representatives.
Weeks later, the bill was heard in committee to the dissatisfaction of Open Borders radicals who testified against and expressed their discontent with the legislation exclaiming “migration is a human right” and “open borders do not exist.”
When the bill came to the floor on Tuesday, we at Texans for Strong Borders were hopeful and optimistic not only to see passage out of the House, but to soon see its enforcement at the Texas border.
However, after multiple points of order, House Speaker Dade Phelan bailed on Texans under the pressure of Democrats as he sustained the third point of order brought forth by a Democrat Rep, effectively killing the bill. What followed next was not much better.
HB 7, a bill that involved a border security provision but nothing similar in substance to HB 20, received several amendments by Republicans to mirror the now dead HB 20. In short, this bill would make any Border Protection Unit effort and existing border security efforts by DPS beholden to the whims of County Commissioner Courts in Texas border counties, which are overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats.
HB 7 does not include the following:
-Legislative Finding of Invasion/Imminent Danger under Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution
-Texas Title 42 Public Health Provisions to Deny Entry
-Making Criminal Trespass from outside of Texas a State Jail Felony