A Harris County judge on Tuesday rejected Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to shut down a program that allocates county funds to help undocumented people access legal support. 

The county, home to Houston, created the Immigrant Legal Services Fund program in 2020 and in October appropriated an additional $1.3 million to keep it going. The program sends funds to five organizations that help people facing deportation get lawyers. 

Paxton had called the program “evil and wicked,” as well as unconstitutional. On Tuesday, a judge disagreed, declining to block the program.

The Harris County Jail leads the nation in ICE detainers — a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to hold a person for deportation — as federal and state immigration enforcement has kicked into high gear under President Donald Trump. 

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said in a statement that this was a “clear defeat” for Paxton.

“The court saw this lawsuit for exactly what it was: a cheap political stunt designed to score headlines,” Menefee said. “Harris County will not be intimidated or pushed around by state officials who are more interested in pandering than governing.”

The background: When Harris County started the Immigrant Legal Services Fund in 2020, it was the largest county in the United States without a program aimed at helping undocumented immigrants get legal counsel. Austin, Dallas and San Antonio already had similar programs. 

County Judge Lina Hidalgo proposed the program, which passed on a party-line vote. 

“When you have a family at a deportation hearing and they don’t have an attorney, they’re deported at a much higher rate, like 90 percent of the time, compared to like 5 percent of the time when they do have an attorney,” Hidalgo said at the time, according to the Houston Chronicle. 

The program sends county dollars to five organizations: BakerRipley, the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Justice for All Immigrants, KIND, Inc. and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service.

Why Texas is suing: Paxton argues in the lawsuit that these programs “serve no public purpose and instead constitute unconstitutional grants of public funds to private entities to subsidize individual deportation defenses.”

He asked the judge to stop Harris County from disbursing funds to these organizations immediately, and bar them from doing so in the future. 

Paxton has filed similar lawsuits against the cities of Austin and San Antonio over their support of nonprofit organizations that help Texans access abortions. In June, the 15th Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, blocking San Antonio from using the funds the city had allocated to potentially help people who needed to travel out of the state for abortions. 

What Harris County says: After Tuesday’s ruling, Menefee accused Paxton of cherry-picking facts about the program and ignoring its “clear public purpose.”

“These are people who live here, work here, pay taxes, and contribute every single day to Harris County,” Menefee, who is in a runoff for the 18th Congressional District, said. “Making sure they can resolve their immigration status strengthens our economy, keeps families together, and makes our community safer.”

In a statement, Menefee and members of the Harris County Commissioners’ Court accused Paxton of using this program to bolster his conservative credentials during a heated primary for U.S. Senate.

“Providing legal support to immigrants who are trying to ‘do it the right way’ was never a concern to the Attorney General’s Office,” Commissioner Adrian Garcia said. “That is, until Ken Paxton decided to run for higher office.”

After the October vote to allocate funding for the legal defense program, Commissioner Rodney Ellis said in a statement that it was necessary because of the increase in immigration raids. 

“Having access to legal representation not only improves case outcomes but helps keep families together,” he said in a statement, according to the Houston Chronicle. “In a county as diverse as ours, local government must step up to safeguard safety, justice, and the people we serve."

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.