Everything Is Bigger In Texas, Including This Sprawling Migrant Enclave
The largest illegal alien “colonia” in the United States is getting bigger. Located just north of Houston, the massive Colony Ridge development is home to more than 75,000 residents, nearly all of them migrants.
The booming but sketchy assemblage of cheap single-family houses, mobile homes and hastily constructed shacks has been dubbed “The World’s Biggest Trailer Park.” Ten years ago, the area was mostly forested wetlands. Today it’s 10,000 acres of denuded residential lots, stretching mile after mile.
The hyper-growth at Colony Ridge is stressing nearby towns, waterways and, as reported by FAIR, local schools. Conditions don’t figure to improve as the developer clear-cuts even larger swaths of woodlands to accommodate an unending wave of new arrivals.
Colony Ridge’s marketing company, Terrenos Houston (website in Spanish), caters to migrants by issuing housing loans that do not require proof of citizenship. Prospective buyers simply use easily obtained Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs), with no need for a valid Social Security number in the application process.
Though light on details about its “non-traditional” financing programs, Terrenos Houston touts “many advantages to buying in a developing area … from the greater potential for appreciation to a wide selection of lots.” But the operation has spawned complaints and threats of lawsuits over alleged inflated interest rates, rapid foreclosures, and 100-year leases in neighborhoods that “look like Third World countries.”
Visitors say they have been shocked by poor or non-existent infrastructure. One found only three fire hydrants in Colony Ridge (two were at a school under construction and behind fences). Others point to chronic flooding in lowland areas.
Yet the community, with its political connections, just keeps growing. Colony Ridge developers are significant campaign contributors to Gov. Greg Abbott and other state and local officials.
This month, Cleveland Independent School District, which serves a portion of Colony Ridge, announced plans to float a $125 million bond in an ongoing effort to keep pace with the surging student population, which is predominantly Spanish speaking. The district estimates it will have to spend $1.2 billion to build 20 additional campuses over the next decade.
Last week, the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee heard a litany of horror stories from the sprawling migrant enclave.
“In September 2022, passersby in Colony Ridge found the body of a 16-year-old Honduran girl who’d been shot to death and dumped in a ditch,” Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies testified. “Gang unit police arrested three foreign nationals, all under 21, and charged them with the murder of Emily Rodriguez-Avila, citing ‘gang overtones’ as a motive.” It was just one of many examples.
Gulf and Sinaloa cartels “invested in Colony Ridge from its inception, financing lots for local operatives to run safe houses through which they move smuggled drugs and people from the border to interior America,” Bensman stated.
Amid the apparent privation, depredation, and illegality U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is nowhere to be found in Colony Ridge. Operation Lone Star – Gov. Abbott’s multibillion-dollar response to the Biden administration’s open-border crisis- is also MIA at this migrant miasma where bigger is certainly not better. In the absence of appropriate civil and criminal law enforcement, expect more horror stories to come.