HOUSTON -- Texas kicked off a court battle in giving itself power to jail its city and county officials who provide safe harbor for illegal aliens, which goes further than President Donald Trump in his attempt to punish so-called sanctuary cities.
The day after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law making it a criminal offense for sheriffs and police chiefs to resist cooperating with U.S. immigration officials, the state sued the city of Austin to enforce the new policy. Texas is asking a federal judge in Austin to declare the measure constitutional. It's set to take effect Sept. 1.
The lawsuit is a pre-emptive strike against advocacy groups that have pledged legal challenges against the measure. Late Monday, one of those groups said it had filed a suit challenging the law in federal court. Luis Vera, an attorney with the Hispanic-rights group League of United Latin American Citizens, said he filed the challenge on behalf of El Cenizo, a small town near the border with Mexico that has had a "safe haven" ordinance since 1999 prohibiting city employees from asking about a person's immigration status.
The move by Texas to criminalize noncooperation comes less than two weeks after a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration from withholding certain U.S. funds from regions that decline to assist stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws leading to deportation. The judge made a preliminary finding that the president's Jan. 25 order violates the U.S. Constitution by threatening to deprive cities of funding for local programs.
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Opponents of the Texas law claim it will alienate the immigrant community from law enforcement and subject Hispanics to racial profiling. They say the "show me your papers" language in the legislation lets law enforcement officers inquire about immigration status during routine encounters, such as traffic stops, and doesn't protect people from such questioning while they're visiting domestic abuse shelters or public schools.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus ripped into the Republicans who pushed the law through despite the objections of every big-city police chief in the state. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that Texas is home to more than 1.4 million people who are in the country illegally, including 71,000 living in the San Antonio area.
McManus and the other police chiefs, including those in Dallas and Houston, say it will create a chilling effect that will cause immigrant families to not report crimes or come forward as witnesses over fears that talking to police could lead to deportation. Critics also fear it will lead to the racial profiling of Hispanics and put officers in an untenable position.
"It's either skin color or language. What else does someone have to base it on?" McManus said, referring to an officer's reason for inquiring about a person's immigration status.
Mexico's Foreign Ministry said in a news release that the law could trample on the rights of Mexican citizens who choose to live just across the border and promised to "closely follow" the situatio.
"Such measures further criminalize immigration, encourage acts of racial discrimination and erode the cooperation of the immigrant community with local authorities," the ministry said.
Advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union are urging county sheriffs and city police chiefs in Texas not to comply with the law.
The law prohibits local law enforcement agencies from "adopting, enforcing or endorsing a policy that limits the enforcement of federal immigration laws," Texas said in Monday's court filing. The statute prohibits discrimination in the enforcement of immigration laws by "race, color, religion, language or national origin" unless permitted by the state and federal constitutions.
The case is Texas v. Travis County, 1:17-cv-00425, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas.
Information for this article was contributed by Laurel Calkins and Kartikay Mehrotra of Bloomberg News; and by Paul J. Weber and Will Weissert of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/09/2017