A Texas town may offer a preview of a Trump plan to force noncitizens from public housing

PORT ISABEL, Texas (AP) — Until recently, young children ran in and out of their public housing homes in this Gulf Coast town, playing on sun-dappled lawns as mothers looked over their shoulders for the school bus to drop off their older kids. Suddenly, couches, dressers and refrigerators started appearing curbside for movers or garbage collectors.

Within weeks, the neighborhood was a ghost town and the playground was empty.

What prompted the mass exodus was a bungled message from the housing authority in Port Isabel, a South Texas community of 5,000 people, many of whom are immigrants working at hotels and restaurants on the beaches of nearby South Padre Island. The Port Isabel Housing Authority indicated a Trump administration proposal was about to take effect that would end housing assistance to families with at least one member in the country illegally. The events that followed provided a glimpse of what could happen in communities across the U.S. if the proposed rule is actually finalized.

“The impact was not limited to undocumented immigrants, but really to immigrants who are here legally as well as people within their families who are citizens,” Marie Claire Tran-Leung, senior staff attorney at National Housing Law Project, said.

For decades, families with at least one legal or eligible resident have been allowed to live in public housing provided those who are here illegally or are otherwise ineligible due to their immigration status pay a full, unsubsidized share of rent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to reverse that.

Advocates estimate up to 80,000 people would be kicked out of their homes nationwide under the measure that is part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. They include U.S. citizens, many of them children born in this country but whose parents were not.

On Feb. 3, the Port Isabel Housing Authority sent residents a letter saying that the Trump administration wanted every household member to prove legal status within 30 days or face eviction. Three weeks later, the agency sent a note of “clarification” that no such proof was required.

It was already too late.

Half of residents living in Port Isabel public housing left within a month of receiving the first letter. The occupancy rate plunged from 91% in January to 43% in May, far below the national average of 94%.

The proposed rule from HUD still has not taken effect.

The housing authority gave no explanation for the initial misunderstanding and officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Fears about eviction and rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might get involved prompted panic among some residents.

“My kids and I spoke and wondered what we were going to do, but then we said it’s better to leave and avoid any retaliation,” a single mother from Mexico raising two teenagers who are U.S. citizens told The Associated Press. She, like other former residents, spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of being deported.

She turned to legal service organizations that told her and others they could stay in public housing. But she and her children decided it was too risky and left their home of nearly a decade, finding an apartment within the same school district that costs about $500 more per month.

The move also added about 10 minutes to the commute to the island, where both the mother and her daughter work. The 18-year-old gets home from school at 4:30 p.m. and grabs a quick dinner before her mom drives her to a job that starts at 5 p.m. The daughter is a top student in her senior class and plans to go to college in the fall with help from scholarship offers, but she worries how her family will make ends meet. Her brother was laid off, and their mom underwent cancer treatment last year, depleting her energy and straining their finances.

Other families face even greater challenges.

A mother of three said she moved her family into a one-bedroom trailer home illegally parked between two other trailer homes. Her oldest son sleeps in the living room.

Another family of three sold beds and other furniture so they could squeeze into a small trailer home, only to find out the landlord wouldn't let them use the mailing address, affecting her children’s school and health insurance.

“Since we got the letter, everything changed from one day to the next. It wasn’t the same anymore. Before the letter, the kids were happy, playing outside,” the mother of two said.

The Trump administration proposed in February that any household with one ineligible resident would disqualify an entire family, estimating that 24,000 recipients were ineligible in 20,000 households.

“We have zero tolerance for pushing aside hardworking U.S. citizens while enabling others to exploit decades-old loopholes,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said at the time.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income families, estimates that 79,600 people could be forced to leave their homes, with a disproportionate impact on children and Latinos.

The rule drew more than 16,000 public comments, many of them critical, including from city leaders across the U.S.

For example, the New York City Council told HUD that an estimated 12% of city of households have at least one member who lacks legal status. Some 240,000 children are in those homes.

“This proposed rule will unequivocally lead to increased displacement, homelessness, poverty, and decreased educational and health outcomes,” the council wrote.

HUD is expected to publish a final version of the rule after considering public comments.

It is almost certain to face legal challenges.

This story has been updated to correct the name of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Associated Press writers Michael Casey in Boston and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this story.

Community members attended a public forum, Feb. 19, 2026, at the Port Isabel Community Center in Port Isabel, Texas, to hear about tenant rights from Eric Dunn, an attorney with National Housing Law Project. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

A plastic dollhouse sits among a pile of furniture discarded by families in a public housing subdivision in Port Isabel, Texas, on April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

A pile of furniture is seen in a public housing subdivision in Port Isabel, Texas, on April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

Two sisters play in a neighborhood playground that sits mostly vacant, April 13, 2026, after neighbors left their public housing homes in Port Isabel, Texas. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

A pile of furniture is piled in a public housing subdivision in Port Isabel, Texas, on April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court on Friday refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers who briefly fled the state in 2025 to block a vote on new congressional voting maps pushed by President Donald Trump had vacated their office.

The all-Republican court dealt a blow to Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republicans in their efforts to severely punish the more than 50 Democrats who bolted for New York, Illinois and Massachusetts in a bid to stop a vote on the maps during a special session. State Republicans had sought their arrest and threatened fines to bring them back to the state Capitol.

Abbott had argued in a lawsuit filed directly to the state’s highest civil court that state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, and others had effectively abandoned their office.

Wu had argued that he was not abandoning his office in the quorum break, but was exercising a right to dissent.

In denying Abbott’s request, the court opinion written by Justice James Blacklock noted that the Republican-majority Legislature had adequately resolved the problem itself through measures such as fines against the missing lawmakers, and that they eventually returned on their own within a few weeks.

“In the end, a quorum was restored in two weeks’ time, without judicial intervention, by the interplay of political and practical forces,” Blacklock wrote.

“Courts have uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves,” the opinion said.

If the issue rises again and the Legislature cannot effectively compel lawmakers to return, the court may someday consider whether the courts should step in, the opinion said.

“When Greg Abbott threatened to arrest and expel us for denying him a quorum, we told him he should ‘come and take it.’ He tried!” Wu said in a statement Friday. “Abbott was wrong, weak, and after all his bluster, he couldn’t come and take a damn thing.”

Wu and the other lawmakers eventually returned to Texas, and the new map was passed and signed into law by Abbott.

Wu had argued that because he had returned to the Capitol and the map was eventually signed into law, there was no longer any reason for the court to weigh in.

“Their return is robust proof that they never intended to abandon their offices,” Wu argued in legal briefs. “Despite the overheated rhetoric, this quorum break was always understood to be temporary.”

The Texas walkout intensified into a high-stakes national drama as Trump urged Texas and other GOP-controlled states to redraw their congressional districts to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House. The Texas map effort set off a wave of similar efforts across several states as governors from both parties pledged to redraw maps with the goal of giving their political candidates a leg up in the 2026 midterm elections.

The state constitution requires that at least 100 of the 150 House members be present to conduct business, and the quorum break effectively shut down a special legislative session Abbott had called to address redistricting and other issues, including aid to communities hit by the devastating July Fourth floods that killed more than 100 people.

In 2021, the court ruled that the Texas Constitution enables the possibility of a quorum break but also allows for consequences to bring members back.

Last year's Democratic walkout was the third since 2003, when lawmakers bolted to stop a vote on a redistricting bill. They did it again in 2021 over an elections bill. In both cases, they were temporary victories as Democrats eventually returned and the Republican majority in the Legislature ultimately passed both measures into law.

FILE - Texas state Rep. Gene Wu speaks to the crowd before California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall on Nov. 8, 2025, in Houston. (AP Photo/Karen Warren, File)

FILE - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, March 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriela Passos, File)