Two dates now anchor a border security warning from one of Fox News’ most seasoned border reporters: Jan. 1 and the opening days of 2029.
Bill Melugin, a congressional correspondent for Fox News with a long record of covering the border, laid out the timeline in a post on X. He published it after Tuesday’s Texas election.
Melugin described the election result as the first strike in a potential one-two punch.
The second strike comes from Capitol Hill, where the Republican-controlled Congress passed no border security laws.
By his account, the defeat of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and that legislative gap combine to open a hole in the border on Jan. 1.
He said the hole could grow wider after 2028 if Republicans lose that year’s election the way they lost Tuesday’s.
Melugin focused on Texas first. He pointed to Gina Hinojosa, who has called on Abbott to end state and local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night. Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one,” he wrote.
He then reviewed Hinojosa’s voting record in the Texas Legislature. According to Melugin, she opposed Senate Bill 4 on two separate occasions, once in 2017 and again in 2023.
“Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas,” he wrote.
Melugin next listed the state-level tools that a future border surge might not meet.
His list covered the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas National Guard, razor wire, water buoys and Operation Lone Star, the state’s border enforcement effort.
“Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a ‘dog and pony show’ and ‘political theater,’” he wrote.
He described Texas as the only barrier during the Biden era, a period when, in his words, the border was treated as a sieve.
To support that point, Melugin reached back to September 2021 and the border town of Del Rio, Texas.
He wrote that thousands of migrants massed under the international bridge there and that Abbott’s orders set the state response in motion.
“Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott’s orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance,” he wrote.
Melugin then moved from the state capital to the White House.
He noted that President Donald Trump has developed and implemented strong border security policies, and he said those policies could all vanish at the stroke of 2029.
The reason, he explained, traces back to Congress.
“Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump’s border security measures,” he wrote.
Melugin wrote that the administration carried out every one of those measures through executive action rather than through legislation.
He said that structure leaves each policy open to cancellation by a successor.
That means “if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level,” Meugin wrote.
Melugin then described what he expects to follow such a reversal.
If that happens, he wrote, look for the “Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.”
His post places two markers on the calendar. Jan. 1 is the date he tied to the change at the state level, and 2029 is the date he tied to a possible shift at the federal level.
