Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Harris County to block subsidies to illegal aliens who are fighting deportation and a nonprofit to stop its voter registration of illegal aliens.
Harris County, the latest lawsuit alleges, unlawfully uses “taxpayer dollars to fund legal representation for individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States and facing federal deportation proceedings.”
Meanwhile, Jolt Initiative, Inc., a hate-Trump nonprofit, is “systematically subverting the election process and violating Texas election law by recruiting, training, and directing individuals to submit false, or otherwise unlawful, voter registration applications.” The lawsuit seeks the dissolution of the group.
Harris County
The 17-page lawsuit against Harris County opens by noting how much money the county is wasting on illegals pursuant to two allocations in October.
On October 16, the County Commissioners Court OK’d $134 million to subversive nonprofits such as Justice for All Immigrants, the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services for “direct legal representation to immigrants in detention or facing the threat of deportation.”
Two weeks later, the commissioners court OK’d another $100,000 for Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative. That money was slated for operating an “‘immigrant resource hotline’ that connects individuals to those same legal service providers.”
Problem is, the lawsuit continues, federal deportations are civil, not criminal, proceedings. Illegals slated for removal “have no constitutional or statutory right to government-appointed counsel.” Instead, they may obtain counsel “at no expense to the Government.”
The allocations trespass the state Constitution, the lawsuit avers. They are “gratuitous” because they enrich the coffers of the nonprofits and help the illegals “without providing a reciprocal public benefit or consideration” to the county.
Because deportations are civil, for which private assistance must be found, the county cannot claim that the allocation provides a public benefit, the lawsuit continues:
These expenditures are gratuitous subsidies for private legal advocacy in civil matters wholly outside Harris County’s legal authority or responsibility.
Political Motivation
The lawsuit also shows that the Commissioners Court provided the free money because it opposes the Trump administration’s policy of mass deportations. “As [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids ramp up and federal attacks target communities of color, it’s essential for Harris County to do everything we can to protect our residents, no matter their immigration status,” a commissioner said.
Another commissioner asked whether the country should refuse to cooperate with ICE. That also showed that the county’s funding deportation fights “is driven by opposition to federal immigration enforcement rather than by any legitimate public purpose.”
And because the county “has relinquished control over the expenditure of public funds” it cannot “ensure that a legitimate public purpose is achieved.”
The lawsuit asks the court to stop the expenditures.
Wrote Paxton on X:
We must stop the left-wing radicals who are robbing Texans to prevent illegals from being deported by the Trump Administration.
Tarrant County
Filed in Tarrant County, the lawsuit against Jolt features three damning allegations. Noting the information required to register to vote, the lawsuit recounts a report from Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. So many immigrants were registering outside Department of Motor Vehicles bureaus, she revealed on X, that a friend had to try three of them to get a driver’s license for her son.
The office in Weatherford “had a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote!” Bartiromo wrote:
Second one was in Fort Worth with same lines and same Dems out front. Third one was in North Fort Worth had no lines but had same voter registration drive.
Paxton then sent an undercover agent to a DMV in Universal City to check on any registration shenanigans there. He went to a Jolt volunteer and “represented himself as a father seeking to register his daughter, who was not with him,” the lawsuit explains:
In spite of the absence of his daughter, the JOLT VDR instructed the undercover agent as to how the agent could submit a voter registration application on behalf of his fictitious daughter.
Jolt, the lawsuit alleges, “doesn’t dispute that it engages in this type of conduct.” Indeed, the outfit “admits that it does not attempt to determine the potential eligibility of the public to become registered voters under State law.”
The lawsuit cites a particularly damning undercover reporter’s video. When the reporter asked whether illegal aliens can vote, the Jolt volunteer said “I guess they could.”
“JOLT misuses its corporation to recruit and train VDRs to assist the public with completing and submitting untruthful voter registration applications,” the lawsuit alleges:
JOLT is engaged in systematic violations of Texas election laws by enabling, facilitating, directing, coercing, and attempting to induce individuals to submit false statements in their voter registration applications.
The state wants the court to dissolve Jolt, remove its rights as a corporation, appoint a receiver to close it, and payment of the state’s legal fees.
“Any organization attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals, must be completely crushed and shut down immediately,” Paxton wrote on X.
