Good morning,

An entire campus in the Houston ISD devoted to foreign students is being closed because enrollment fell alongside President Donald Trump's strict enforcement of immigration laws. Today's One Click Survey asks about funding education for illegal aliens.

This is the Texas Minute for Monday, October 6, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Houston ISD Ties Deportation Crackdowns to School Closure

• With enrollment numbers plummeting for the Las Americas Newcomer School, the Houston Independent School District announced last week that the remaining students will be moved to a nearby campus. As Michael Wilson reports, immigration enforcement is being blamed—or credited—for the closure.
      
• Throughout its history, the school has had students from 37 different countries, including China, Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, and El Salvador, among others. This fall, though, there were just 21 students enrolled.
     
• Lana Hill, HISD's director of communications, said the enrollment decline was partly due to “what’s happening in our country on a federal level.”
      
• Last month, Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles told the city council that demographic shifts alongside fears of deportation have been largely responsible for enrollment losses in the district.

Redistricting Trial Resumes Today

Democrats Claim Racial Gerrymandering

• The federal trial over Texas' new congressional map continues today in El Paso. Approved this summer by the legislature, the new lines give Republicans the opportunity to pick up five seats in the U.S. House. Travis Morgan is covering the trial live from El Paso's federal courthouse.
     
• While partisan gerrymandering is legal under federal law, racial gerrymandering is not—and that's the case being made by Democrats eager to stop the map. The expert they presented on Saturday, Matt Barreto—a UCLA professor—has already been found to lack credibility in a different federal trial earlier this year in North Carolina.
      
• Barreto claimed it was impossible to produce race-blind maps in Texas that still have black-majority districts, as the legislature's map does. In response, the State showed that the Democrats' own race-blind maps also produced black-majority districts.
        
• The trial is expected to continue through Friday, but appeals are expected regardless of the outcome.

UT-Austin Invited to Join Major Trump Initiative

• Adam Cahn reports that the University of Texas at Austin has been invited to participate in a major initiative by the Trump administration for higher education reform.
      
• In total, nine universities were invited to participate in the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. The program includes ten top-level long-sought reforms intended to spur changes in university behavior. For example, it prohibits any form of admissions discrimination based on demographic characteristics, such as race, sex, sexual identity, or religion.
     
• Similarly, participating universities must commit to merit-based hiring, using objective and measurable criteria.
      
• Strict compliance with anti-money laundering laws and foreign funding disclosures is required, along with caps on foreign student enrollment and vetting for alignment with American values.

Texas A&M Regents Name Former State Senator as Interim President

• Texas A&M System Regents have named Tommy Williams interim president of the College Station campus until a new president is hired.
     
• This marks a return to Texas A&M for Williams, a former state legislator who currently runs a public affairs company. Williams previously served as the Vice Chancellor for Federal and State Relations for the Texas A&M System after leaving office in 2013, and later worked for Gov. Greg Abbott.
      
• Williams is the latest former Republican lawmaker to take a policymaking position at a Texas university. At A&M, he joins Glenn Hegar, a former comptroller and state senator who recently took over as the system chancellor. Meanwhile, State Sen. Brandon Creighton was just named chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, and former state representative John Zerwas holds the same position for the University of Texas System. 
       
• An interim president became necessary following the recent resignation of former TAMU president Mark Welsh. Welsh left after a controversy over course content in a TAMU children’s literature class that included how to introduce LGBT material to children.

Lamar CISD Proposes Bond Package Totaling Over $2 Billion

• Voters in the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District in Fort Bend County are being asked to approve a four-item bond package, including one that would alone cost taxpayers $1.9 billion. Addie Hovland details the spending.
      
• Most of the debt would be used to build new schools, while more than $50 million would be spent upgrading laptops and other equipment. 
      
• According to Lamar CISD, the proposed bonds would not change the current tax rate. Andrew McVeigh of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility said that while the rate won't change, there is still a long-term impact to be borne by taxpayers.
     
• With more than 42,000 students, Lamar CISD currently has $3.1 billion in outstanding bond debt.

OTHER EDUCATION NEWS

Quote-Unquote

"The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed." – William Henry Harrison​

One Click Survey

Immigration experts have long included public education in the costs of, and magnets for, illegal immigration. Last week, Houston ISD closed a campus that had primarily served "foreign" (read, illegally present) students. Officials claim that parents' fear of deportation was driving the plummeting enrollment.

Since the early 1980s, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling has forbidden Texas from denying enrollment to illegal aliens. Should Texas challenge that ruling by collecting immigration status information at enrollment and reporting illegal aliens to federal officials? 

Once you’ve clicked an answer, reply to this email with any thoughts you’d like to share!

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