For The Record

On January 13 the Sheriff stood in front of the Denton County Commissioners Court and said the new immigration enforcement agreement was at no cost to the county. The Chair said right. Then he said it again. It's at no cost to the county.

The Court approved it unanimously. Four votes, with Commissioner Edmondson absent.

Seven days before that, he had signed a document that says the opposite.

What he signed

Page 121 of the packet sitting in front of every member of that Court, Section X, under the heading Costs and Expenditures: "Participating LEA personnel will carry out designated functions at the LEA's expense, including salaries and benefits, local transportation, and official issue material."

The next sentence closes the door on the argument before anybody makes it. "Whether or not the LEA receives financial reimbursement for such costs through a federal grant or other funding mechanism is not material to this MOA."

LEA means law enforcement agency. It means Denton County.

The agenda memo from the county's own lawyer said FINANCIAL IMPACT: None. It was wrong in writing, seven days after the Sheriff signed the page that says who pays.

The law he cited says it costs money too

He told the Court the Legislature now requires sheriffs to join one of three 287(g) models, and that Denton was going above and beyond the minimum requirement. His words.

That law is Senate Bill 8, and Section 753.053 of it says a sheriff who signs one of these "shall allocate the necessary resources, including personnel and funding."

The same bill created a grant fund to cover 287(g) costs "that are not reimbursed by the federal government." Equipment. Training. Confinement. Compensation for personnel performing duties under the agreement.

You do not write a fund to pay for something that is free.

And Denton County was already in compliance. The jail model agreement passed this Court in February of last year and again in April. The deadline in the law is December of this year. He signed the task force agreement on January 6, 11 months early, while already covered.

The state already set our number, and it is $120,000

The Comptroller runs the fund on a sliding scale by county size. A county between 500,000 and 999,999 residents gets $120,000. A county of at least 1,000,000 gets $140,000. Denton County passed 1,000,000 people in 2025 and is still in the lower tier, because Texas law reads a county's population off the most recent federal decennial census. That was 2020, when this county counted 906,422. So the state is sizing a county of 1,069,346 as though it were still under 900,000.

So our number is $120,000 a year. Applications opened January 1, 2026, 12 days before this Court voted.

A resident came to public comment in February and told this Court the figure was $140,000. I said at the time that I could not confirm it. I can now, and he was close. $140,000 is what Tarrant County gets. For a county our size it is $120,000. I would rather correct a number in the county's favor than leave it sitting there wrong.

41 sheriffs went and got theirs

The Comptroller is required by that same law to report on this. Publication 96-2728, dated April 1, 2026: "As of April 1, 2026, 41 sheriff's offices have applied for and will receive $3.42 million in funding for fiscal year 2026 from the program."

Exhibit 1 of that report names all 41. Denton County is not on it. Tarrant County is. So are Cooke and Grayson, both of which border us and both of which are a fraction of our size.

Here is my caveat, and I am giving it to you straight. That report is the state's most recent published accounting and the next one is not due until April 1, 2028. Applications stay open year round. So what I can tell you is what the state has published, not what happened last week. A public information request is going to the Comptroller for anything filed after April 1. Whatever comes back, I will print it here, including if it proves this section wrong.

The application has to come through this Court

To get that money a sheriff has to submit a resolution from the county commissioners court affirming that county funding for the sheriff's office will not be reduced as a result of receiving the grant. That is the Comptroller's requirement and it mirrors Section 753.105 of the statute.

No such resolution has come to this Court. I pulled every agenda and every set of minutes for all 28 meetings from January 6 through August 4 of this year. There is exactly one 287(g) item in the entire record: the January 13 approval. No application. No resolution. No acceptance. No budget amendment.

This county knows exactly how to do this

When Denton County wants federal immigration money, it walks it through the Commissioners Court with a resolution attached, every single time.

November 2023, an application for $351,780. June 2024, an application for $309,532. January 2025, acceptance of $196,796, with the resolution right there in the packet. And again on June 30 of this year, roughly $400,000, Court Order 26-0472, unanimous, four votes with Commissioner Falconer absent.

Five months after the task force agreement, this county was still routing immigration grant money through this Court the correct way. It has never done it for this one.

So which is it

Either the agreement costs nothing, and the Legislature that wrote the fund and the document the Sheriff signed are both wrong.

Or it costs something, and Denton County is paying for it out of the general fund while a check with our name on it sits uncashed in Austin.

Both of those are a problem. Nobody on that dais asked which one it was. They voted it through and moved to the next item.

That is not a Sheriff story. The Sheriff is separately elected and he answers to the voters, not to a County Judge. This is a story about the body that writes the budget being told something that the paperwork in its own hands contradicted, and taking it on faith.

What I would do about it

None of this is complicated.

Read the costs section out loud before voting on a contract. It takes 11 seconds.

Never let FINANCIAL IMPACT: None stand on a document that assigns costs to the county. If the memo and the contract disagree, the item comes off the agenda until somebody reconciles them.

Publish packets with real text in them. Pages 118 through 131 of that January packet are photographs of paper. You cannot search a photograph. The only reason anybody found that sentence is that somebody sat down and read 14 scanned pages line by line, and no resident should have to.

And ask the question. Seven months in, there is no public accounting anywhere of what the task force model costs this county or what it brings in. Not on an agenda, not in a budget amendment, not on the county website. So I am asking for it in writing.

The county budget gets set this fall. Those hearings are open to the public and almost nobody goes. Go. Ask them what this costs, and ask them why the state's check is still sitting there.

The agreement, on ICE's own site: https://www.ice.gov/doclib/287gMOA/DentonCoSheriffsOfficeTX_TFM_MOA_01262026.pdf

The January 13 minutes: https://dentoncounty.granicus.com/MinutesViewer.php?view_id=26&clip_id=2042

Senate Bill 8, Government Code Chapter 753: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/GV/htm/GV.753.htm

The Comptroller's grant program: https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/development/grants/sb8/

The April 1, 2026 report: https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/development/grants/sb8/docs/immigration-grants-report.pdf

Denton County population, the 2020 census and the 2025 estimate: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/dentoncountytexas/PST045224