New York Times
By Manny Fernandez
March 15, 2018
It is often called Texas’ “show me your papers” law, but few papers are actually being shown in some of the state’s biggest cities.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday largely upheld the Texas immigration law known as Senate Bill 4, which bans so-called sanctuary cities in the state. Among other provisions, the bill allows police officers to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest or detain, including during routine traffic stops.
But months after portions of the law went into effect in September, prompting legal battles and fierce debates about whether it could lead to widespread racial profiling, officers in some Texas cities appear to be asking about immigration status only in very rare cases. And even after the court’s ruling this week, officials in those cities are not planning to make them change.
“From an operational standpoint, from a policy standpoint, it will have no impact,” Chief Art Acevedo of the Houston Police Department said of the law. “The problem is the perception problem that it creates, that local police officers are going to be more interested in immigration enforcement of people who don’t bother anybody.”
Here in Houston, the state’s most populous city, the police department said officers had asked detainees about their immigration status only twice since September. In Austin, city officials said it had happened just once. All of the officer inquiries were reviewed by officials, who said that they were relevant to investigations and did not amount to racial profiling.
“We have a code for it so we can track it,” said Chief Acevedo, who requires his officers to document all immigration-status interactions. “When we reviewed the data two weeks ago, out of tens of thousands of contacts this department has had, we’ve had two inquiries.”
Senate Bill 4, or S.B. 4, does not require all officers to ask about a person’s immigration status, but instead allows them to ask those questions at the officers’ discretion.
The low number of reported inquiries illustrates the conflict between the state Republican leaders behind the law and local elected officials and law enforcement in largely Democratic major cities like Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
Officials in those cities, several of which have sued Texas seeking to overturn the law, are trying to walk a fine line between complying with the measure and minimizing its impact on their operations. They have followed requests from immigration authorities to hold detainees suspected of being in the country illegally — another provision in S.B. 4 — while reassuring anxious and outraged immigrants in their communities.
After the ruling on Tuesday, the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, made an unscheduled appearance at a rally by opponents of the law outside City Hall. “It remains my position that the Houston Police Department is not U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and H.P.D. should not function as an arm of ICE,” Mr. Turner said later in a statement.
State leaders were unwavering. “Hopefully this ruling will make the law crystal clear for those liberal public officials in some Texas cities who have flaunted their opposition to S.B. 4 and misrepresented its intent,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, said in a statement.
Supporters of the law viewed the ruling as a victory, including conservative leaders in other states seeking to pass similar bans on sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
Republican lawmakers in Florida tried but failed to pass a bill banning sanctuary cities this legislative session. But the Republican speaker of the Florida House, Richard Corcoran, who has pushed for a crackdown, said the ruling on Tuesday in the Texas case would help their cause.
“The linchpin of the sanctuary defenders’ argument was that courts would find such legislation unconstitutional,” Mr. Corcoran said in a statement. “We knew they were wrong, and today the court agreed. Any elected official who thinks they can choose which laws they will and will not follow is sadly mistaken and this ruling reinforces that fundamental American truth.”
In addition to prohibiting sanctuary policies, S.B. 4 threatens officials who violate the law with fines, jail time and removal from office. The measure was backed by the state’s Republican governor and lieutenant governor, and passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Austin, Dallas, Houston and other cities and counties sued Texas to block the law, saying it was unconstitutional, opened the door to racial profiling and would make documented and undocumented immigrants fearful of reporting crimes and cooperating with the police.
The ruling on Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit only complicates the situation. Parts of the law went into effect after a court ruling in September. The Fifth Circuit opinion allows nearly all of the law’s provisions to kick in, although lawyers for the localities and groups suing the state said they were considering appealing the decision to either the full Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court.
Despite upholding most of the law’s provisions, the Fifth Circuit’s decision could narrow the effect of the law. The ruling suggested that local officials who limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement because of limited resources were not necessarily violating the law.
“It is not 100 percent obvious what is allowed and not allowed as far as policymaking,” said Thomas A. Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents San Antonio and other jurisdictions and groups in the lawsuit. “You don’t know how it’s going to be put into effect in the field.”
The Fifth Circuit judges struck down one provision of the law — a clause that had barred officials even from endorsing policies that limit immigration enforcement, which the judges said violated the First Amendment. But some local leaders are concerned that the free speech rights of city employees remain restricted by the law, because the judges lifted the endorsement prohibition only for elected officials and not for nonelected government personnel.
On Wednesday in San Antonio, some of those dynamics seemed to be at play. Shortly before the start of a news conference held by groups opposed to the law, Councilman Rey Saldaña wondered whether the city’s police chief, William McManus, would speak at the event. Mr. Saldaña invited Chief McManus — who is an appointed official, not an elected one — but the chief did not attend.
“I’m protected according to the Fifth Circuit, because I’m an elected official, but the police chief is not,” Mr. Saldaña said. “He works for the city. It gets us to the point where we might just have to wear a muzzle around our face with respect to whether we can truly represent the interests of community members that come to us.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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