Every penny should be returned to Texas taxpayers.
Governor Greg Abbott announced Friday1 that Texas will receive $7.5 billion from the federal government to reimburse border security costs Texas taxpayers carried during the Biden administration. After speaking with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Abbott said the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the award. “Texas held the line when Washington would not,” Abbott wrote. “Now, Washington is reimbursing Texas taxpayers for those expenses.”
That confirmation is good news, but it is not the finish line.
Texas spent more than $10 billion2 on National Guard and Department of Public Safety deployments, and other related enforcement after the Biden administration declined to secure the southern border. Congress created reimbursement authority in the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed in July 2025, with $13.5 billion split between a $10 billion Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pot and a $3.5 billion Department of Justice fund. Texas is receiving $7.5 billion from the DHS share with additional Justice Department awards still possible.
In June, when Abbott submitted Texas’s reimbursement request, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR) called on state leaders to dedicate the entirety of any federal repayment to taxpayers, not to new programs or a larger government.3
Friday’s announcement does not change that. Our call is clear: every penny should be returned to Texas taxpayers.4
State Rep. Andy Hopper made the same connection.5 The reimbursement, he said, is “great news for Texans and for putting us on the path to eliminating property taxes in Texas this session.” He is right about the opportunity. The 90th Legislature convenes in January. The Comptroller’s revenue estimate typically arrives the same month. This $7.5 billion can and should be booked as taxpayer money coming home, not as a slush fund for agencies, special-interest projects, or another round of government spending growth.
Property taxes remain the levy that most directly punishes families who work, save, and try to own a home. TFR’s June statement urged leaders to commit reimbursement dollars to buying down school maintenance-and-operations property tax and lowering the overall burden so Texas moves toward true property ownership.
These funds exist only because Texas families already paid the bill Washington refused to pay. Absorbing $7.5 billion into baseline government growth would convert a rare reimbursement into another excuse to spend. That would be a betrayal of the taxpayers who financed Operation Lone Star while Washington looked the other way.
Abbott correctly called the award a victory for the taxpayers. The next test is whether Austin treats that victory as money to return or money to keep.
State leaders should lock the $7.5 billion, and any further reimbursements, into property tax reduction and structural reforms next session.
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- https://x.com/gregabbott_tx/status/2101032012819660831 ↩︎
- https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-submits-request-for-reimbursement-of-state-border-security-costs ↩︎
- https://texastaxpayers.com/tfr-calls-for-entirety-of-federal-reimbursement-to-be-returned-to-taxpayers/ ↩︎
- https://x.com/texas_taxpayers/status/2101033143314575819 ↩︎
- https://x.com/andyhoppertx/status/2101038768903832051 ↩︎
