Colony Ridge’s defense lawyer and a land developer lobbying group teamed up to draft legislation that would exempt Texas developments like Colony Ridge from certain consumer protection regulations, communications obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire reveal.
A House bill and its companion bill in the Senate would carve out an exemption in mortgage origination laws for Texas residential real estate developers, threatening to embolden developments like Colony Ridge that cater to illegal aliens and foreign nationals. The legislation has already passed through the House Committee on Pensions, Investments, and Financial Services but is still under consideration in the Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee.
Colony Ridge and the Texas Land Developers Association (TLDA) members that employ similar strategies are currently required to inform consumers that they can contact the Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending in the event that they have complaints.
But under the new legislation, the developments would not be under the purview of the Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending, and the legal risk would be offloaded to loan originators instead. That means there would be even less oversight of developers who have built businesses by catering to illegal aliens and selling land to foreign buyers who haven’t been qualified as borrowers — often charging sky-high interest rates and reselling land after borrowers default.
The bill would strip the Texas Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending’s authority to regulate residential real estate developers who provide mortgage loans to purchasers of property, and would limit oversight to separately licensed residential mortgage loan originators and companies.
This legislation, according to documents obtained by The Daily Wire, came about through a partnership between Colony Ridge’s defense lawyer and the Texas Land Developers Association, a lobbying organization whose former president defended the infamous development’s strategy of selling American land to illegal aliens en masse.
A leaked email viewed by The Daily Wire indicates that Jason Ray, a lobbyist who is defending Colony Ridge in the Department of Justice lawsuit against the development, worked with the TLDA to prepare the legislation. In a November 21, 2024, email obtained by The Daily Wire, TLDA president Kevin Campbell identifies Colony Ridge lawyer Jason Ray as “the attorney that prepared the bill language.”
Obtained by The Daily Wire
The TLDA and Ray are attempting to create a special carve-out for developments like Colony Ridge with the help of a former Democrat in the statehouse who is financially intertwined with special interests who stand to gain.
Ray discusses the bill at length in a December 6, 2024, email to Kevin Campbell, TLDA compliance officer Heather Oakes, and Kacee Jackson, a TLDA board member. The Colony Ridge defense lawyer told The Daily Wire that he did not draft the bill, but did not respond after being asked if he had any role in the bill’s preparation.
This marks the latest attempt from developers to impose their will on Texas politics. A Daily Wire investigation revealed that Governor Greg Abbott nominated Colony Ridge to become a federal Opportunity Zone, granting investors special tax breaks meant to spur development, after he received a $100,000 campaign donation from the developer’s wife in 2018.
Abbott hosted Colony Ridge developer Trey Harris and State Senator Brandon Creighton at the Governor’s Mansion for a lunch meeting as he nominated the development for the lucrative status. Then, just about a year after Colony Ridge was named an Opportunity Zone, the company Creighton works for announced that it would be building homes inside the controversial development. Creighton now sits on the Senate committee considering the new legislation.
State Representative Janis Holt, who defeated former Representative Ernest Bailes after The Daily Wire exposed the latter’s ties to Colony Ridge, warned that the legislation could enable fraud and money laundering, all while encouraging more developments like Colony Ridge to crop up around Texas.
“The Colony Ridge – Harris Brothers real estate model started on a small scale, which allowed them to operate under the radar and gradually expand their influence,” Holt wrote in a letter to the Chairman of the House Committee on Pensions, Investments, and Financial Services.
“The Colony Ridge development in my district has already placed enormous strain on local resources, including schools, roads, and county services. The business model employed by Trey Harris, which is currently under scrutiny by the Department of Justice for predatory lending practices, further exacerbates these issues,” she explained. “Allowing exemptions could worsen the situation by enabling similar practices elsewhere.”
“The aforementioned reasons and the crippling effects of Colony Ridge remove any possibility that I would support this legislative approach,” she added.
The Daily Wire previously reported that Scot Campbell, the former head of the TLDA, admitted that the Colony Ridge business model relies on giving loans to foreign nationals and illegal aliens to buy American land, all without checking if the individuals are creditworthy.
EXCLUSIVE: A Texas land developer admitted that the Colony Ridge business model relies on selling land to unqualified foreign buyers:
“We will not be able to sell our developments if each of our buyers have to have SS#’s.”
I obtained his stunning admissions🧵 pic.twitter.com/f2nWFuWA5r
— Spencer Lindquist 🇺🇸 (@SpencerLndqst) February 13, 2025
“We will not be able to sell our developments if each of our buyers have to have SS#’s and we have to qualify each buyer as to the buyer’s ability to repay,” Scot Campbell, the former head of the Texas Land Developers Association, admitted in the email. “It will kill our industry and will make our future resale of foreclosed lots worth a lot less … because we will all be fighting over a few qualified buyers,” he added.
The legislation is now being carried in the Texas House by a representative who’s accepted $20,000 from individuals and entities that stand to gain from the proposal.
The bill was introduced by Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Democrat-turned-Republican who received $14,000 from the now-defunct Texas Land Developers Association PAC. Guillen represents House District 31, which stretches from the southern border to Floresville, just southeast of San Antonio.
Guillen took $1,000 from Kyndel Bennett, the CEO of Cayetano, a land development company that allows foreign nationals to buy Texas land along the southern border using documents from the Mexican government as identification instead of a Social Security number. Bennett is also a TLDA board member.
He received an additional $5,000 from Scot Campbell, the former TLDA chairman behind the email defending Colony Ridge’s practice of selling out American land to illegal aliens.
The House bill has companion legislation in the Texas Senate sponsored by Sen. Adam Hinojosa of the 27th district, which covers the Rio Grande Valley along the border. Like Guillen, Hinojosa has taken money from TLDA members and received $11,500 from Scot Campbell. Neither Guillen nor Hinojosa responded to a request for comment.
TLDA President Kevin Campbell initially told The Daily Wire that the legislation “will have no impact on larger lenders like TLDA members.” But the legislation would benefit residential real estate developers of all sizes in Texas by allowing them to receive an exemption from mortgage origination regulations.
The Daily Wire followed up, asking why the TLDA had invested so heavily in the legislation, was working with a lawyer to draft and modify the bill language, and why it was being carried by a Representative and a Senator who both had financial ties to TLDA members, if TLDA member companies did not stand to gain. Campbell did not respond.
