Two Texas Lawmakers File Bills to End the State Mandate That Counties Cooperate With ICE

AUSTIN — The 90th Texas Legislature's first filing day brought the session's immigration fight into bill form: State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer and State Sen. Jose Menendez, both San Antonio Democrats, filed House Bill 123 and Senate Bill 99, which would repeal Texas counties' state-mandated cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the San Antonio Current reported Monday.

The bills take aim at the requirement itself — the state law that obliges county law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement — rather than at any single county's practice. Filed on the first morning of the filing window, they land in a Legislature transformed by last week's elections, with Democrats holding the Texas House and the governor's office for the first time in decades and Republicans retaining the Senate.

The filings follow movement at San Antonio City Hall, according to the Current: Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has said she will meet with City Manager Erik Walsh to discuss how the city could reevaluate its partnership with ICE, and Council members Teri Castillo, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and Ric Galvan have proposed an ordinance that would order San Antonio police to contact ICE only when a person in custody is already going to jail on new charges or carries a qualifying warrant hit — and have asked for a special meeting on the proposal by November 17.

HB 123 and SB 99 are filings, not law: the session does not convene until January 12, and filing continues through March 12. But their place in the first day's stack — alongside the Medicaid, wage and data-center bills that led the morning — marks immigration enforcement as one of the defining arguments of the session now taking shape at the Capitol.