Thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of House Bill 20, which would create a Texas Border Protection Unit under the control of the Texas Department of Public Safety. My name is Joshua Treviño, and I am the Chief of Intelligence and Research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research institution in Austin, Texas. In my role, much of my work focuses on the violence in Mexico, and the reclamation of Texas’s sovereignty under the Constitution.
Homelessness
Too Close for Comfort
The last decade of homeless policy has been an abject failure. Currently the United States is facing the highest levels of homelessness and encounters with the mentally ill are increasing in Texas’ large cities. The blame can be squarely fixed on ‘Housing First’ which has prioritized a ‘one size fits all’ approach while ignoring the underlying causes of chronic homelessness. When...
April 23, 2026