Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has asked state officials to pause any action on a possible sale of public land at Boca Chica State Park in Cameron County, in the Rio Grande Valley, after reports that roughly 1,300 acres of state land — including and extending beyond the state park — had appeared in a draft agenda for a closed-door discussion by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. Hinojosa raised the issue at her first post-election news conference on Thursday, November 5, at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin, three days after she defeated incumbent Governor Greg Abbott in the November 3 election.

Source: Reuters via Billionaires Africa

"This morning I was pleased to talk to the executive director of Texas Parks and Wildlife to confirm that this issue was not on today's agenda and to request that no action be taken in respect out of this transition," Hinojosa said, adding of the Valley: "The Valley is so important to me as the place I am from, and I will never forget it." The item was not on the commission's final November 5 agenda.

The land and the park

Boca Chica State Park covers roughly 1,055 to 1,060 acres of dunes, marshes and beach on the Gulf of Mexico in Cameron County, about 18 miles east of Brownsville and just north of the mouth of the Rio Grande. The park surrounds much of SpaceX's Starbase, Elon Musk's Starship development and launch facility. The roughly 1,300-acre figure in the draft agenda covers more than the park itself. Texas bought the park land in 1994 from the Nature Conservancy, and until 2023 it was leased to the federal wildlife service.

What the agencies say

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has said the commission "is not considering the sale of the Boca Chica property at its November meeting," and any sale would need a final vote by the commission in an open session. Outgoing Governor Greg Abbott said on October 19 that a sale was not imminent. The Texas Tribune reported that the department asked the Texas Attorney General's office to block release of the draft agenda; that ruling is still pending, and no new date for a commission discussion has been announced.

A history of land deals around Starbase

This is not the first contested land transaction at Boca Chica. In 2024, the parks commission approved a swap that would have given SpaceX 43 acres of the park in exchange for 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, but the company later pulled out of that deal. In September, a federal judge declined to block a separate swap in which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will give SpaceX 715 acres of refuge land in exchange for 683 acres of private land. Texas law allows the parks department to sell land if ownership is no longer in the department's best interest, but the commission — currently nine Abbott appointees — must approve any sale.

Why it matters beyond Cameron County

Boca Chica is one of the few publicly owned stretches of Texas Gulf beach, and the fight over it has become an early test of how the incoming administration will deal with Musk's companies. Hinojosa framed the relationship plainly at her news conference: Texas can work with Elon Musk's companies, but on Texas's terms. Supporters of a pause say public beach access and coastal habitat should not be traded away during a transition, when the outgoing administration still controls the commission but the incoming one will live with the result.

What happens next

Hinojosa takes office in January 2027, and the land question stays with the Abbott-appointed commission until then. Watch for three things: whether the commission places the Boca Chica item on a future public agenda, the Attorney General's decision on whether the draft agenda stays secret, and whether SpaceX or the department confirms any negotiation on the record. Until one of those happens, the established fact is a governor-elect's public request — and a sale that has not happened.