For One Texas County, Arresting Migrants Made Big Money

Kinney County, along Texas’ border with Mexico, collected some $1.7 million in bail from migrants who were deported before they could make their court appearances. The money was never returned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/migrants-border-bail-forfeit-kinney-county-texas.html

https://archive.ph/fD7bM


Juan Antonio Gomez Torres was earning barely $80 a week shaping mud into bricks in the dusty hills above San Felipe, Mexico. When his wife became pregnant with their fourth child, he decided to try his luck crossing into the United States to look for better-paying work.

Weeks later, Mr. Gomez called his cousin from a jail in Kinney County, Texas, desperate for money. After swimming across the Rio Grande, Mr. Gomez had been arrested by armed state police officers on a trespassing charge, with bail set at $1,000 — more than a quarter of his yearly income.

Mr. Gomez promised to repay his cousin after he appeared in court on the trespassing case, when under normal circumstances his bail money would be returned to him. But that never happened. No sooner had Mr. Gomez been released than Kinney County officials handed him directly over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities, who promptly deported him back to Mexico. Unable to show up in court, he was told his bail would be forfeited and the $1,000 deposited into Kinney County’s own accounts.

He was not the only one. Since Gov. Greg Abbott stepped up the state’s own immigration operations during a surge in unauthorized border crossings in 2021, Kinney County has forfeited bail from hundreds of migrants, many of whom, like Mr. Gomez, were trying to escape poverty in their home countries.

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