Chuck Schumer bragged about blocking ICE funding seven times in 46 days.
In Kinney County, Texas, a sheriff was cleaning out his deputies' desks.
Now cartels are running their networks across Texas with fewer cops to stop them – and Schumer is on a two-week vacation.
ICE Funding Freeze Left Texas Border Sheriffs Without Deputies
In Kinney County, Sheriff Brad Coe had to let three deputies go.
Not because crime dropped or because the border got safer. But because Congress stopped sending money and the sheriff ran out of options.
Kinney County is one of the most active cartel corridors in America. Those deputies weren't doing paperwork – they were running interdiction, tracking cartel movement, and working overtime in rural Texas while Washington played politics.
Now they're gone. The cartels are not.
It's not just Kinney County. Jackson County Sheriff Rick Boone got an email: federal grant funding frozen.
With no Operation Stonegarden money and no Operation Lone Star funds left, his deputies can no longer work overtime or prioritize drug interdiction. Terrell County Sheriff Thad Cleveland hasn't received his ICE 287(g) funds. Lavaca County Sheriff Steve Greenwell is in the same boat.
These sheriffs are the Texas border security mission. Five years of sustained cartel intelligence work and drug seizures that don't make the evening news – but keep fentanyl out of your community.
Socialist Democrats just kneecapped all of it.
Operation Stonegarden Grants Frozen as Democrats Block Border Security Funding
Operation Stonegarden is the federal funding that puts Texas sheriffs on the road at 2 a.m. – funding deputies' overtime, patrol vehicles, and equipment in counties too small and too broke to wage a cartel war on their own.
In South Texas counties with 65,000 residents, Stonegarden is the difference between real interdiction and waving at cartel scouts from a pickup truck.
Senate Democrats blocked DHS funding seven times. Every single time, Schumer called ICE a "rogue and deadly militia." Every single time, Stonegarden grants froze and Texas sheriffs fell further behind.
Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd put the numbers on the table. His office handled 8,888 calls in 2020. In 2025, they handled 15,739. Nearly doubled – with no additional manpower.
"Political decisions have real world implications for people out in the field doing the work," Boyd said.
If Operation Lone Star funding dries up completely, Boyd loses one-third of his deputies. No drug task force. No cartel surveillance. No overtime in one of the busiest smuggling corridors in the country. Not a talking point – a county left defenseless.
Democrats Left Town While the Cartels Stayed
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said it plainly after Schumer agreed to a partial deal that still carved out ICE and Border Patrol: "It is now clear to everyone that Democrats didn't actually want a solution. They wanted an issue."
He's right. And that issue cost Texas sheriffs their deputies.
The Senate passed their version of a DHS funding bill at 2 a.m., then left for a two-week recess. The House passed a full funding bill – ICE and CBP included – and sent it back.
Schumer called it "dead on arrival" and got on a plane. Congress won't be back until April 14.
Sheriff Boyd is direct about what's at stake: cartels have people in every community across Texas – every small town, every mid-size city. They're still selling drugs the same way they always have. The only way to dismantle the cartel business model, Boyd says, is a sustained, long-term push that "could take years."
What Schumer just engineered is the opposite of that. He held the line against the sheriffs doing the actual work, bragged about it on the Senate floor, and caught a flight home.
Three deputies in Kinney County are out of a job because Senate Democrats needed a campaign issue.
Sources:
- Bethany Blankley, "DHS Partial Shutdown Impacting Local Law Enforcement," The Center Square, March 28, 2026.
- "Senate unanimously advances DHS funding deal without ICE and CBP amid shutdown," Fox News, March 27, 2026.
- "House passes bill to fully fund DHS through May 22; top Democrat says 'dead on arrival' in Senate," ABC News, March 28, 2026.
- Rep. Tony Gonzales, "Rep. Tony Gonzales Announces Over $12 Million for Border Security in South and West Texas," Press Release, October 3, 2024.