This fucking guy, I swear.
Still a crook any way you look
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Harris County for allocating county funds to programs that help undocumented people get access to legal support.
The county, home to Houston, created the Immigrant Legal Services Fund program in 2020 and last month appropriated an additional $1.3 million to keep it going. The program sends funds to five organizations that help people facing deportation get lawyers.
In a statement, Paxton called the program “evil and wicked,” as well as unconstitutional. This is the latest in a flurry of headline-grabbing lawsuits filed by Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, aimed at organizations that support immigrants.
The Harris County Jail leads the nation in ICE detainers — a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to hold a person for deportation — as federal and state immigration enforcement has kicked into high gear under President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit was filed in Harris County District Court. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said in a statement that the program was “perfectly legal” and his office would defend it in court.
“This lawsuit is a cheap political stunt,” he said. “At a time when the president has unleashed ICE agents to terrorize immigrant neighborhoods, deport U.S. citizens, and trample the law, it’s shameful that Republican state officials are joining in instead of standing up for Texans.”
Let me start with the observation that if a program that has been in existence since 2020 is in fact unconstitutional, that says something about Ken Paxton’s legal acumen. Beyond that, I think the line about this being “the latest in a flurry of headline-grabbing lawsuits filed by Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate” pretty much sums it up. He wants the headline more than anything else, and while he would like to win he doesn’t need to, as he can still then complain about radical leftist judges, even if they were appointed by Greg Abbott. Same shit, different day. The Chron has more.