Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to Texas’ congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., updating them on his investigation into the Colony Ridge development.
As reported by The Dallas Express, the Colony Ridge development north of Houston has become a pressing issue for Texas lawmakers as growing claims suggest that it has become a haven for tens of thousands of unlawful migrants.
In response to a request by the Texas delegation in Congress, Attorney General Paxton offered his analysis of the development and its legal standing.
“The development appears to be attracting and enabling illegal alien settlement in the state of Texas and distressing neighboring cities and school districts,” he stated. “Complaints from nearby communities about the development’s scale of growth and unmanageable externalities reveal that this unincorporated settlement has drawn far too many people and enabled far too much chaos for the current arrangement to be tolerated by the state.”
“Texas has seen a growing trend of real estate developers buying huge quantities of undeveloped land, creating primitive subdivisions, and selling the bare lots in a practice often paired with offering minimal-down-payment, high-interest owner-financed loans,” the attorney general explained. “These loans require little identity verification.”
The attorney general further noted, “This form of real estate development and financing has created an attractive opportunity for noncitizens to cross the border and settle in Texas, with fast-growing developments the size of entire cities forcing nearby areas to struggle to adapt — and even subsidize — the influx of new residents enriching the developers.”
“The scale of the Colony Ridge development has proved unmanageable for effective law enforcement,” the attorney general’s statement continued. “Violent crime, drug trafficking, environmental deterioration, public disturbances, infrastructure overuse, and other problems have plagued the area and nearby towns.”
Specifically, Paxton blamed Texas Sen. Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville) and Rep. Ernest Bailes (R-Shepherd) for facilitating the settlement of unlawful migrants. Bailes voted to impeach the attorney general earlier this year, while Nichols was one of the only Senate Republicans to vote to convict the attorney general on any impeachment articles, as reported by The Dallas Express.
“Colony Ridge in particular was made possible by a specific arrangement created by Senator Robert Nichols and Representative Ernest Bailes. Municipal Management District (‘MMD’) authority was specifically granted to create an advantageous carve-out for the Colony Ridge development to act virtually as its own city,” the attorney general claimed. “This is a substantial deviation from lawmakers’ original intent for MMDs.”
Outlining how the lawmakers seemingly enabled the Colony Ridge developers to erect an autonomous municipal entity that functionally granted the company sole taxing and bond issuance authority over hundreds of acres with no oversight, the attorney general concluded, “I am beyond disappointed in Senator Nichols and Representative Bailes for apparently working to enrich specific developers at enormous expense to the rest of the public.”
“My office has coordinated with the Governor’s team to prioritize this issue, and I urge the legislature to address this growing crisis created by some of their own members’ hidden agendas,” he added. “Senator Nichols and Representative Bailes created these problems with their initial legislation, and now the legislature must undo what they have tolerated in their districts for years.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has made unlawful migrants a focus of the current special session in Austin, and the House recently held a public hearing on the matter.
The developer brothers Trey and John Harris have denied allegations that Colony Ridge is a so-called “colonia” or beset by cartel activity.
Trey Harris recently claimed that opposition to the rapid development is “a racial issue. It’s a prejudice issue with some of the people in” the surrounding communities,” per the Texan.
“They just don’t like the customers that are moving in because of their ethnicity,” he alleged.
Prior to the special session, John Harris invited lawmakers to tour the community in an attempt to disprove the colonia allegations, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Rep. Bailes rejected Paxton’s accusations and explained his involvement when the municipal management district was established in a statement provided to The Dallas Express.
“The Municipal Management District in question, filed my first session in office, was the result of specific requests from both Liberty County and the City of Plum Grove, both expressed in the form of an official resolution, in order to place some restrictions on the development,” he explained.
“This bill was to provide restrictions and ensure that any development in this area was as positive as it could possibly be,” Bailes added.
“While the extreme growth in Colony Ridge presents challenges, as does the Biden Administration’s open border policies for all of our communities, I should not be shocked by the number of falsehoods being peddled by many who have not been in the trenches.”
