AG opinion raises doubts about judge’s qualifications in Abbott's border crackdown

Hundreds of migrants arrested under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border crackdown could have their convictions overturned and receive new trials, after an opinion from the attorney general last week called into question the authority of the judge who presided over their cases. “We are in the process of reviewing hundreds of cases, and we’ll be filing pleadings to vacate hundreds of prior actions and orders taken by any unqualified judge,” said Kristin Etter, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, a nonprofit that represents the migrants. Amrutha Jindal, an attorney at the Lubbock Private Defenders Office, which coordinates indigent legal representation under the operation, confirmed attorneys are studying the opinion to determine what legal remedies they may seek.

The cases largely involve migrants accused of trespassing on private property, a state misdemeanor charge used to jail thousands of migrant men under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative. If the attorneys move forward and are successful, it would present a dramatic upheaval in an already-overwhelmed system in Kinney County, the small border community that handles the majority of the cases. At the same time, attorneys say it would also offer hope for hundreds of migrants who would receive a second chance to prove their innocence and in some cases reclaim forfeited bail money. The doubt over the judge's qualifications is the latest in a series of miscues that stretch back more than a year, including migrants being detained illegally for weeks and sometimes months without charges filed against them; a wave of lawsuits; an ongoing Justice Department investigation into alleged civil rights violations; and swelling costs that have forced Republican state leaders to dip into various state agency budgets to keep the program afloat. In a non-binding legal opinion dated Oct. 25, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton found that former county judges — referring to county executives who serve on commissioners courts — who are not retired judges with the required experience, are not qualified to serve as visiting judges.