Research Note: Texas's Operation Lone Star Migrant Busing Program Increased Hispanic Homelessness in Destination Cities

As part of the largest and most expensive state-run immigration program in U.S. history, the state of Texas bused more than 100,000 immigrants to six Democratic-led cities with sanctuary ordinances between 2022 and 2024. In this research note, we examine whether the Texas migrant busing program led to an increase in Hispanic homelessness in cities that received buses chartered by the state. Using point-in-time data measuring local homeless populations from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and administrative data from the Office of the Texas Governor to identify busing destinations, we apply a series of fixed-effects individual slope models to estimate the impact of Texas's busing program on local rates of Hispanic homelessness. We find that the busing program led to an annual increase of 36% in Hispanic homelessness in destination cities relative to prebusing trends. These results are robust to counterfactuals showing that the busing program had no impact on non-Hispanic homelessness, consistent with the predominantly Hispanic composition of bused migrants. Our findings underscore the detrimental impact of the Texas busing program on Hispanic homelessness and offer policy solutions to mitigate its effects.