Source: House Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX, 35th)
Originally written by Jason Buch at MySanAntonio.com
Questions about immigration status are “still off the table” for San Antonio police after a federal judge blocked most of the new Texas “sanctuary cities” law set to take effect Friday, Police Chief William McManus said Thursday.
The San Antonio Police Department will have to change its policies after U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia on Wednesday upheld a portion of Senate Bill 4, which creates penalties for local governments that prohibit police from asking about immigration status.
But city officials and lawyers who had challenged the law said Thursday that other portions of the ban that Garcia struck down severely limited its impact.
The law allows the attorney general to fine or remove from office local officials who “prohibit or materially limit” a police officer from “inquiring into the immigration status of a person under a lawful detention or under arrest” and sharing information with federal immigration authorities.
Garcia blocked the phrase “materially limit,” writing that it was too vague, but left in place the word “prohibit.” As a result, the police department removed from its policy a line that states: “Officers will not ask any person for proof of citizenship or legal residency.”
Still, Garcia sufficiently diluted the SB 4 provisions, said lawyers representing San Antonio and other city and county governments who sued the state to halt the law. They said police departments can tell officers questions about immigration status are a low priority and should be avoided as long as they don’t outright block them from asking.
To that end, McManus read to reporters at a news conference the city’s revised policy: “Officers will not detain and/or arrest an individual based on the fact or suspicion that they are in the United States illegally. The enforcement priorities of this department are to protect the public safety, and the priorities do not include asking any person for proof of citizenship or legal residency.”
Officers are also instructed not to ask victims or witnesses of a crime about their immigration status “unless an officer must ask to further investigate the offense” or the officer is providing information about visas for immigrants who cooperate with police, the new policy states.
“Otherwise, we do not ask and our priorities remain the same, and that is to answer calls for service and work with the public to help prevent and deter crime,” McManus said.
The chief said that officers will receive a copy of the new policy and will be shown a video about it at roll call.
While Garcia ruled that police are allowed to ask about immigration status during an arrest or detention, which could include a traffic stop, and are allowed to share information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he warned that the law does not allow police to stop someone to determine their immigration status or to draw out detentions for immigration enforcement, even if someone admits to being in the country illegally.
“SB 4 merely requires that the officer be permitted (but not required) to share with ICE whatever information (however incomplete) he discovers during his immigration inquiry, either after releasing the individual or during the seizure, provided that this communication does not prolong the seizure,” Garcia wrote.
His ruling, a response to a lawsuit filed by local governments, including San Antonio and the border town of El Cenizo, temporarily blocks most of SB 4 from taking effect until he can decide its constitutionality. Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a notice Thursday stating he’ll appeal Garcia’s decision.
A section the judge blocked that allows the attorney general to fine and remove from office for local officials who “adopt, enforce, or endorse a policy under which the entity or department prohibits or materially limits the enforcement of immigration laws” had made opponents particularly nervous.
They’d argued the word “endorse” in that context allowed the state to punish any official who voiced opposition to SB 4 and that the phrase “materially limits” was so vague it would require local police to act as immigration officers or risk penalties.
Garcia agreed, saying that both were likely unconstitutional and barred the state from enforcing them.
In a brief filed Thursday asking Garcia to stay his injunction, attorneys for the state wrote that Garcia misunderstood the segment of the law, which “is designed to stop local law enforcement agencies from having policies that obstruct cooperation with federal immigration officials.”
Garcia denied the state’s request to stay his decision until the appeal is decided.
Although he said some portions of the law were constitutional, Garcia expressed concern about the bill.
“There is overwhelming evidence by local officials, including local law enforcement, that SB 4 will erode public trust and make many communities and neighborhoods less safe,” the judge wrote.
“There is also ample evidence that localities will suffer adverse economic consequences which, in turn, harm the State of Texas. Indeed, at the end of the day, the Legislature is free to ignore the pleas of city and county officials, along with local police departments, who are in the trenches and neighborhoods enforcing the law on a daily and continuing basis. The depth and reservoir of knowledge and experience possessed by local officials can be ignored. The Court cannot and does not second guess the Legislature. However, the State may not exercise its authority in a manner that violates the United States Constitution.”
Opponents of SB 4 cast the debate over the law as a contest between the will of officials in Austin and local governments.
“This is the most vivid example of the state playing Big Brother in a year that has been overloaded with state and federal attempts to dictate municipal policy to local elected officials,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Thursday. “The bottom line is that SB 4 is an excessive and cruel reaction to the federal government’s failure to deal with immigration.”
The fight over SB 4 is part of a larger shift in the national immigration debate. During the administration of former President Barack Obama, the federal government and the state of Texas were often at odds on immigration policy. Under President Donald Trump, the Justice Department has come out in favor of SB 4, telling Garcia the law is constitutional.
Joining immigration activists in front of the federal courthouse Thursday morning, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-San Antonio, said the SB 4 decision “gives us encouragement that we will ultimately prevail, that we will never accept being drug backwards by those state officials who are kind of the Junior Trumps up there in Austin.”
Doggett noted that despite the victory over SB 4, recipients of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program face a looming threat, again driven by the state of Texas.
Paxton has told the Trump administration that if it does not end the program that provides renewable two-year reprieves from deportation to some young immigrants who are in the country without permission, he will challenge it in court on Tuesday. According to national media reports, Trump is considering halting or changing the program, possibly as early as Friday.
“It’s very unlike President Trump to yield to a threat,” Doggett said. “So I hope he’s not going to back down in the face of Ken Paxton.”
Selene Gomez, the San Antonio area coordinator for Mi Familia Vota, said at the rally that activists will be holding another event Friday in Milam Park asking the City Council for a resolution in favor of immigrants’ rights and preparing for a decision on deferred action, known as DACA. Her organization will continue to combat SB 4 and encourage Texans to vote against the legislators who supported it, Gomez said, but “everybody now is shifting 100 percent to DACA.”
