In 2021, during the legislative session, Blockchains Inc. pitched Nevada lawmakers to allow the cryptocurrency company to create its local government, or Innovation Zone, within Storey County.
The Innovation Zone, backed by then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, would have carved out a separate tax base, policing agency, and government outside Storey County but within county borders. The plan fell through following pushback by the county, some legislative members, and finally, the courts.
Now, a developer has created a town in Liberty County, Texas, for illegal aliens by selling off land to border crossers without asking for any paperwork. Trey Harris sells plots at Colony Ridge, allowing buyers to purchase land without proof of income or credit.
The story goes back more than a decade. Trey and his brother John started buying distressed lots in Montgomery and Liberty Counties and then offering the properties to Hispanic buyers using owner financing.
Around 2010, they began looking for more property to buy. They found 500 acres in Liberty County, subdivided the land into half-acre tracts, and dubbed the development Montebello.
Within a year, they had sold all 900 lots. They bought an additional 900 acres and sold 1,400 lots, followed by more land.
Today, Colony Ridge is a maze of streets with wildly disparate housing, from dilapidated mobile homes to brand-new two-story houses. Once sold out, there could be 100,000 residents in the unsanctioned community, a population just slightly smaller than Sparks, Nev., at 109,226.
The settlement is around 60 square miles, home to up to nearly 75,000 illegal aliens policed by only eight deputies. It remains unknown how much the county collects in taxes from Colony Ridge.
Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader said the agency needs more deputies, but the relatively small tax base of the county constrains its budget. He also said violent crime occurs in Colony Ridge, and cartels operate there, but those are no more prevalent than in other parts of Houston and Texas.
The figures show the violent crime rate in Liberty County was lower last year than the Houston Police Department and the Harris, Galveston, Chambers, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Waller counties. The data also show murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults have remained consistent over the past decade, even as the population has boomed during that time.
Law enforcement agencies, however, do not report data on drug-related crimes to the state. And because so many are in the country illegally, crime statistics historically are undercounted in Colony Ridge due to a fear of the law.
Harris offers the land through the development company Terranos Houston using Spanish language marketing, where he says he requires two forms of ID, a down payment of around $500, and a U.S. address but does not ask for a social security number, which he claims is not required by law.
In Nevada, as in Texas, no state or federal laws prohibit the sale of land to illegal aliens. Meanwhile, a growing number of states are considering or have passed measures this legislative term banning “foreign adversaries” and foreign entities, specifically China, from buying U.S. farmland.
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