The City Tried A Shell Game For $110 Million

Houston tried to walk a tightrope on immigration enforcement, and it may have stepped straight into a funding trap. We break down the City Council vote to amend Houston’s ICE-related ordinance, why the mayor says the rewrite was negotiated with the governor’s public safety office, and why Governor Greg Abbott still publicly warns the city could lose around $110 million in public safety grant money. If you’ve been trying to understand what “cooperation with ICE” means in practice and how state contracts can force a city’s hand, we lay it out in plain language.Then we zoom in on what enforcement looks like on the ground. ICE Houston reports 277 arrests in a two-week period tied to people in the country illegally who also had prior criminal convictions, with the agency citing hundreds of combined convictions across violent crime, drug trafficking, and sex offenses. That data point reframes the local policy fight and raises the question every big Texas city is trying to answer: where does local policing end and federal immigration enforcement begin.From there we hit a rapid set of accountability flashpoints across Texas politics: the unresolved Texas Lottery rigged jackpot scandal, an appeals court ruling on Adrian Garcia’s illegal dual appointment, fresh school choice data from the Texas Education Freedom Accounts rollout, new concerns about educator misconduct investigations, a $39 million East Downtown homeless shelter operations deal, and a judge’s resignation that comes with a lifetime ban from judicial service. ************************************************Listen every day to our strong conservative programs on Patriot Talk 920 AM.  Tune-in on your radio in Houston to KYST 920 AM or download our app by visiting 920app.com or search for "Patriot Talk 920" from your app store!