Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made it official: a third special legislative session starts October 9.
In a letter to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan and obtained by several media entities over the weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott warned he will bring lawmakers into a 30-day special legislative session starting the afternoon of Monday, Oct. 9, 2023.
Abbott has teased for months that he would call the session to address school choice. That concept has proved popular with voters and even passed the Senate but has been thwarted by the Texas House. Recently, Abbott has indicated the agenda would also include matters related to the Colony Ridge housing development outside Houston that targets illegal aliens.
School choice is an expected topic, one all Texas GOP leaders agree is a priority save the foot-dragging, Democrat-backed Speaker Phelan. After strong-arming Republican House members into an unpopular and ultimately futile impeachment vote against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, it remains to be seen how much juice Phelan has left to thwart school choice, though certainly his Democratic backers (and the teacher’s unions backing them) will make it a top priority.
But the wild card here is Colony Ridge, a news story that’s been bubbling on the back burner for a while, and one I’ve been grappling to find out enough about to report on fairly.
Colony Ridge is allegedly a high crime neighborhood in the Houston exurbs populated mostly by illegal aliens, some of whom have cartel ties, sold using questionable loan practices.
As the crisis at the southern border continues, rural Texas is allegedly being settled by unlawful migrants through a system backed by drug cartels, leading to an increase in criminal activity.
Nestled in a previously undeveloped area of Liberty County, northeast of Houston, the Colony Ridge development represents the largest “colonia” in the United States, home to anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 unlawful migrants.
Todd Bensman, the senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, has been documenting the colonia and highlighting the scope of the issue.
“A vast jumble of single- and double-wide trailers on low stilts, hand-hewn shacks made of leftover construction material, and parked motor homes has quickly overtaken tens of thousands of Liberty County acres and eradicated its rural way of life,” Bensman wrote.
“Upwards of 50,000 mostly Spanish-speaking Latinos, maybe more — nobody knows, really — are living on some 30,000 homestead lots they purchased in recent years over some 35 square miles from ‘Houston Terrenos,’” Bensman continued.
The migrants are able to settle in Colony Ridge using Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) loans, which do not require applicants to have a legal residence or Social Security number.
In recent testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, Bensman claimed that the crime wave followed the mass migration.
“Legacy residents are increasingly alarmed by criminal atrocities never seen before,” Bensman alleged.
Pointing to an incident that occurred in April, he told the representatives about how “a five-time deported Mexican national who owned a home in neighboring San Jacinto County allegedly murdered five members of a Honduran family that lived next door after they complained that his firing of a semi-automatic assault-style rifle at 11 p.m. was keeping the baby awake.”
Good times, good times.
Bensman testified that the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartels invested resources into the Colony Ridge development early on, financing safe houses used to smuggle drugs and people into the interior of the United States.
“Liberty County reflects a microcosm of what unnecessary crime can look like anywhere large numbers of foreign nationals who are only thinly vetted settle,” Bensman added.
The first question is: Where exactly is it? If you enter Colony Ridge in Google maps, you get a location just southeast of New Caney that’s in Montgomery County, not adjoining Liberty. I believe this is the sales office for Houston Terrenos. This appears to be the actual extent of Colony Ridge:
It’s not a new problem, though I only became aware of it this year. This TPPF PDF report dates from 2020, states Colony Ridge has been in development since 2011. Some quotes:
Cleveland ISD’s elementary, middle, and high schools are bursting at the seams with students, growing by over 100 new enrollments per month. To finance the multiple new schools that are needed at all levels, the district’s residents are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds issued and are experiencing crushing, double-digit growth in their property tax bills…The initial, unrestricted development undertaken by the area’s largest housing land sales company, Colony Ridge Land, LLC, caused considerable consternation and foreboding among residents and local government officials alike. More recently, a number of measures have been taken to better manage the population boom, including the creation of a Municipal Management District for a core 5,000-acre section under development. Moreover, the Houston El Norte Property Owners Association has begun to aggressively enforce covenants…
Because thousands of unauthorized immigrants are among the new residents, however, more needs to be done. Collaboration in enforcement of U.S. immigration laws should be maximized by federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities through initiatives such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) and Warrant Service Officer programs…These programs enable common-sense cooperation across jurisdictions and effectively prevent communities from becoming sanctuaries for criminal aliens.
Fast forward to this year, and Cleveland ISD’s population has doubled in three years.
A housing development outside Cleveland, Texas, just north of Houston, is populated primarily by illegal aliens and putting strain on the local school district.
“Colony Ridge Communities” is a land development project that markets land to illegal aliens through loan loopholes and is one of the largest settlements of illegal aliens in the country.
In the 2019-2020 school year, Cleveland Independent School District only had 6,584 students. As the current school year begins, the number of students has nearly doubled to more than 12,400.
At the district’s back-to-school convocation, Superintendent Stephen McCanless said the district has enrolled 1,092 new students in the past weeks and more students are expected to be registered in the next few weeks.
The district has hired 1,498 staff members since the 2021-2022 school year, and due to the limited capacity of the Cleveland High School gym, the district almost did not hold the back-to-school convocation. To accommodate these students, the district built six new schools.
The Colony Ridge settlements are believed to have a population of 22,000, according to the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office.
Then there’s the Abbott donor connection: “Colony Ridge is partially funded by William Harris, a major donor of Gov. Greg Abbott, who gives yearly contributions of $300,000 to Abbott’s campaign.”
And those aren’t the only controversies surrounding Colony Ridge. There’s an active lawsuit against Terrenos Houston and Colony Ridge on a variety of allegations:
Payments Being Stolen: There are clients who are making their payments and yet the Colony Ridge company claims that they have not done so and proceeds to repossess their land to keep it or sell it to others. Flooding: Lack of drainage planning has caused flooding for residents and flood problems for surrounding communities that have been in that territory for generations. Intimidating: They have intimidated the surrounding communities with lawsuits and other practices when they have tried to resolve the situation of the waters with garbage that have reached their homes. Inhumane Conditions: Many in the community have complained about poor garbage management, lack of potable water in cases, high crime rates, and roads in very poor condition.
Here are the figures the lawsuit alleges are behind Colony Ridge:
As with all lawsuits, keep the “allegedly” in mind.
What sort of remedies are available? Well, the Biden Administration could always control the border and enforce laws against illegal aliens, but they seem very loath to do that, very recent statements otherwise not withstanding.
At the state level, Texas could implement E-Verify for all employment, which would severely curtail the attractiveness of Texas as a settling spot for illegal aliens. And the legislature could require either citizenship or legal immigration status as a requirement for a home loan in Texas.
It should prove to be an interesting session, as both school choice and illegal aliens have proven powerful issues with black and Hispanic voters, much to the chagrin of the Democratic Party establishment.
It should be an interesting session…
Tags: 88th Texas Legislative Session, Border Controls, Brent Lane, Cleveland ISD, Colony Ridge, Dade Phelan, Democrats, E-Verify, Greg Abbott, Gulf Cartel, Houston Terrenos, Illegal Aliens, Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) loans, Liberty County, Mexico, Republicans, Robin Lane, school choice, Sinaloa Cartel, Special Session, Texas, Todd Bensman, unions, William Harris, William Trey Harris III
Look immediately SE of Plum Grove. Right north of, and with an entrance to Hwy 99.
I actually looked at the area over a couple of years ago, when I was shopping for a place. Didn’t like the look of the neighbors, and it’s in a serious floodplain. They were selling cheap, though.
Said ‘nope’ and got a place by Lake Livingston. Uphill side.
Our pastor spoke about this place a few years back, except then it was referred to as “Plum Grove.” Look for articles about Plum Grove from, say, 2019 to 2021, and how a tiny town nearby (population: a couple 100s) grappled with the influx of 1,000s and 10,000s of Spanish speaking neighbors of uncertain status. Utilities, public schools, fire, police, other services faced lots of challenges, etc etc etc.
@ed in texas:
Man don’t that sound like a recipe for disaster. And you know if disaster happens they’ll find some entirely unrelated Republicans to blame. Such as Abbot. Just like they laid Katrina / New Orleans around Bush’s neck.
“What sort of remedies are available?”
How possible to send post cards / put flyers up on telephone poles describing how wonderful Chicago is? Far less heat & humidity. Proud sanctuary city, unlike Texas which might crack down at any time. Seriously, Texas might send ICE in any day now at a moment’s notice. Too uncertain to stay.
➡️ along with fliers for Loudon County, VA – the wealthiest county in America, and spitting distance from DC.
Really play it up. Describe what great services are available, what jobs are likely, how great they pay. Give very detailed directions, what $ for bus fare, etc. Make the flyers in Spanish of course, but be sure it’s a decent translation – we really want the message to stick.
➡️ along with other Blue 🔵 megacities: NYC, LA, Philly, San Fran, Seattle … Portland (both OR and ME) … Baltimore, Boston … Sacramento, Baltimore, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison WI.
ALL of these places are smugly proud to virtue signal. Make it real. I mean, they’re such wonderful sanctuaries, so it’s a win for everybody, right?!
➡️ along with Providence RI … Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Albany … Hartford, New Haven.
Go all out. Make it unbelievably enticing. For a given city, give direct quotes from that city’s mayor or whatever about how they won’t enforce immigration law. There are lists of sanctuary cities along with what local official said so. Use it.
➡️ AND DETROIT. Oh definitely Detroit. Loads of available space, with crumbling houses already in place. They don’t need to build a crumbling house, there are already 100s of abandoned ones ripe for the taking.
You can go to ColonyRidge.com and see that they actually have a few locations, with the previously mentioned Plum Grove being just one of them. It seems nearly all the land is in and around the Cleveland, TX area, north of loop 99 near US59. If you look up Terrenos website is completely in Spanish.
The Porter area south of this location is booming. You can live near Kingwood, but outside of Houston, and have the benefits of a currently Republican run Montgomery County. With 99 being near complete, you have an easy trip to the more expensive Woodlands or to the refineries and factories east of Houston. So, it is seeing some rapid growth.
The difference seems to be as Howard notes. The Porter area is growing the public and commercial infrastructure and utilities to support this rapid growth. Colony Ridge is simply cheap land. You’ll need to provide water/sewage. You’ll need to provide culverts for drainage (to where?). You’ll need to get building permits. They actually show 6 steps, but I’ll grant the last 3 (electrical hook-up, getting a mailbox, and “enjoy!”) are typical for any home. No mention of schools or emergency services. There are no MUDs supporting the development, unlike can be found in Porter. There are no area fresh water supplies or sewage treatment. No significant hospitals within 15 miles.
It also took me awhile to find the “flood plain”, but indeed, the land sits adjacent to the East Fork of the San Jacinto River. The East Fork isn’t quite as big as the West Fork, but you’ll find a healthy respect for the West Fork’s flood plain that doesn’t seem apparent for the East Fork’s.
Don’t depend on E-Verify to alleviate the issue much. That system is ridiculously easy to spoof. We had a sweep of our company several years back because we do ITAR work in our precision manufacturing departments, and had over a dozen illegals who were green lighted by E-Verify that we had to let go or lose our ability to do that work. Mexican peeps here say that for 1200 bucks they can get a set of papers that E-Verify won’t balk at.
The system is working as intended.
I think this sort of tactic works well with the homeless, but probably would be far less successful with people who have already put down money for land and/or a house.
If you’re looking to evaluate flood risk, go to riskfactor.com. You can search by address, neighborhood, or zip code. It’ll give you the numbers.
Handy when looking at real estate websites. If they’re offering a great deal, but riskfactor (used to to be floodfactor) says 8/10, you might want to just look elsewhere.
Also on the agenda for the third special session is a ban on vaccine mandates by private companies.
In talking about e-verify, consider this column from Robert X Cringely back in ’07. Courtesy of the Internet Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081221222132/http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20071109_003391.html
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