Texas’s New Democrat Governor Vowed To Stop Helping ICE – Here’s What She Can Actually Undo

Democrat Gina Hinojosa’s upset of Gov. Greg Abbott hands the state’s border machinery to a lawmaker who spent the campaign attacking it. 

Abbott conceded around 10 p.m. Tuesday, ending his bid for a record fourth term and making Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin, the first Democrat elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990. As we reported overnight, Democrats swept Texas, with James Talarico also taking the state’s US Senate seat.

Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin laid out the stakes Wednesday morning, saying “Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one.

“Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.”

Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night.

Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one.

Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.

Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a “dog and pony show” and “political theater”.

Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott’s orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance, except for some horseback agents who were falsely slandered for “whipping”.

Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump’s border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) November 4, 2026

Hinojosa didn’t mention ICE, immigration or the border in her victory speech. Her one “day one” promise was to fire Education Commissioner Mike Morath, whose term expires Jan. 10, shortly before she’s sworn in. Conservatives pounced on that too:

LOL, welcome to socialist hell, Texans.

You will choose socialist indoctrination through the public education system or else.

We warned you.

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 4, 2026

The Record

On the campaign trail ICE was a recurring target. In January, after federal agents fatally shot US citizens in Minneapolis, Hinojosa called on Abbott to stop “facilitating” ICE operations by “refusing to provide state resources until DHS stops killing U.S. citizens and detaining our children.”

At a Stop ICE rally in Austin later that month, she made it a pledge: “As governor, I will never offer up Texas as a staging ground for operations that terrorize families and enrich his donors.”

Her campaign spelled out which kind of state help it meant. In February, it accused Abbott of rolling out “the red carpet for federal immigration operations in Texas, offering state land, deploying the Texas National Guard to work inside ICE detention centers,” and noted that Texas holds more than 18,700 ICE detainees, “the highest share of any state.”

As a legislator, Hinojosa voted against the 2017 sanctuary cities ban, SB 4, and against the first round of appropriations for Operation Lone Star.

Her “dog and pony show” line was from October, when she contrasted the operation with her own outreach to Biden officials after rail crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso were shut during the December 2023 migrant surge. “That was not a dog and pony show. That was not spending billions of taxpayer dollars like Greg Abbott has done on Operation Lone Star,” she told The Dallas Morning News. A campaign release promised: “As governor, I’ll put in the work to secure the border, not waste working Texans’ money on political theater.”

What She Can Undo

The parts of Abbott’s border operation that run on a governor’s orders are hers to wind down once she takes office in January. Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021 on his own authority, sending DPS troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers to the border. The Guard answers to the governor, including the detention-center work her campaign objected to.

The local cooperation in Melugin’s post is a different matter. SB 4 is state law: it bans sanctuary policies, requires jails to honor ICE detainer requests and lets the attorney general sue localities that don’t comply. Last year lawmakers added SB 8, which requires every sheriff who runs a jail to enter a 287(g) agreement with ICE, deputizing jailers to help enforce federal immigration law. Repealing either takes the Legislature, and Republicans still control the state Senate.

Hinojosa also hasn’t said she’ll end Operation Lone Star. In an interview with KPRC, she did not promise to eliminate border security funding, faulting Abbott instead for the billions spent prosecuting migrants for trespassing and paying for their legal defense. She has praised President Trump’s immigration policy for slowing illegal border crossings.

Del Rio

Melugin’s Del Rio example dates to September 2021, when some 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants camped under the international bridge. On Abbott’s orders, DPS troopers lined up their patrol vehicles along the river to form a steel wall against further crossings.

Mounted Border Patrol agents photographed there were accused of whipping migrants. A CBP investigation released in July 2022 found no evidence that any agent struck a migrant with reins, though it found some agents used unnecessary force and recommended discipline.

Trump Turns On Abbott

Trump, who had endorsed Abbott as “strong and highly respected,” turned on him shortly after the concession. Abbott lost because he became a “RINO” in the “last six months of his Political Life,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Abbott had skipped Trump’s San Antonio rally in October as the polls tightened.

SB 8′s deadline for sheriffs to have their 287(g) agreements in place is Dec. 1, weeks before Hinojosa is sworn in.