In September, Greg Abbott signed his name to the same claim he has made for five years: that people crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally "posed an ongoing and imminent threat" to the state. With that sentence, he renewed his border security disaster proclamation one more time.
The problem is that his own party's president says the border is secure. The Trump administration says border crossings have dropped to historic lows since it took over in January 2025.
So why does Abbott keep declaring a disaster? A new investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune points at what the "emergency" lets him do: move money around, suspend rules, and hand out contracts without competitive bidding — all without asking the Legislature.
69 renewals, 21 of them under Trump
Abbott first declared a border emergency in May 2021, four months into Joe Biden's presidency. That month, CBP recorded more than 180,000 encounters along the southwest border. His original order blamed "the Biden Administration's open-border policies."
Since then, ProPublica counted, Abbott has renewed or amended the proclamation at least 69 times. Twenty-one of those came after Trump was back in the White House.
Meanwhile, the numbers on the ground collapsed. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border have averaged about 8,000 a month this year — a small fraction of the traffic at the border when Abbott first declared the disaster.
It is now the longest continuously running emergency proclamation of Abbott's time in office. Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, told the reporters: "I don't think that there is a similar example, certainly not as to the length of the emergency, and certainly not after the emergency has seemed to pass."
What the "emergency" buys him
Texas is supposed to be a "weak governor" state. The constitution limits what a governor can do without lawmakers. Abbott has spent a decade getting around that — ProPublica and the Tribune have reported that he has gathered more power than any Texas governor before him, in part through executive orders and disaster declarations.
A disaster declaration is a key that opens a lot of doors. It lets the governor:
- Shift money from other agencies without a vote of the Legislature
- Suspend state rules
- Skip competitive bidding and award contracts at times of emergency
That last one has not stopped just because the border quieted down. Since January 2025, the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department — two of the top agencies involved in Abbott's border operation — have awarded more than $5 million in no-bid contracts citing the emergency, according to state records reviewed by ProPublica. The purchases included:
- A contract worth more than $2 million to a Texas gun company, CTC Gunworks, for rifles and pistols
- Apartments
- A Ford F-150
Abbott's office didn't answer the reporters' questions about the no-bid contracts. A spokesperson instead sent a statement blaming "four years of failed border policies under Democrat rule."
Billions of dollars, little oversight
The emergency sits on top of a mountain of money. Texas budgeted more than $11 billion for border security during the Biden years and added another $3 billion last year, after Trump took office, according to the investigation. Lawmakers also handed Abbott's own office nearly $230 million last year to give out as border grants.
Democratic state Rep. Mary González, vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the problem is that some of that money still sits in the governor's office "which has no checks and balances." Because the state is "still under an emergency — which is not an emergency anymore," she said, "you have seen some questionable appropriations under the veil of border security."
And the program those dollars fund has a track record. A 2022 investigation by ProPublica, the Tribune and The Marshall Project found that Operation Lone Star's claimed success counted arrests that had nothing to do with the border or immigration, and drug seizures by troopers who weren't directly assigned to the operation. The Tribune and Army Times documented pay delays and a wave of suicides among the National Guard troops sent there.
Lawmakers tried to stop it. It didn't pass.
Texas legislators from both parties have tried to rein this in. Last session, they filed at least a handful of bills that would have required the governor to get the Legislature's approval before extending a disaster declaration. None passed.
Abbott isn't pretending he'll ever let go. At a press conference in early October, he said: "We must secure the border not just for the next two years of the Trump administration, but we gotta do it forever."
University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus put the real issue plainly: "governors, once they get a power, are hesitant to give it back."
Where the money could have gone
Every dollar locked up in a permanent emergency is a dollar Texas lawmakers aren't deciding how to spend. This is the same governor whose 3% budget-cut order led his health agency to propose eliminating an autism therapy program serving 583 kids — while his private-school voucher program was exempt. It's the same administration that let 211,000 Medicaid applications sit waiting.
What the record shows
Greg Abbott has renewed or amended his border disaster proclamation at least 69 times since 2021 — 21 of them since Trump took office, as monthly border crossings fell from more than 180,000 CBP encounters to about 8,000 Border Patrol apprehensions. The emergency lets his agencies skip competitive bidding, and since January 2025 they've handed out more than $5 million in no-bid contracts citing it. Lawmakers from both parties tried to require legislative approval to extend a declaration like this one, and none of their bills passed.
Source
Trump Says the Border Is Secure. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Keeps Declaring an Emergency. — ProPublica and The Texas Tribune
