Legislature Mandates Sheriff-ICE Cooperation in Jails or Streets

Over the weekend the state House and Senate ironed out lingering differences in Senate Bill a measure that will assuming the governor s signature mandate previously voluntary agreements between Texas county sheriffs and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE As passed SB will require all Texas sheriffs to apply for so-called g agreements or a similar federal campaign with ICE The bill mandates that sheriffs allocate the necessary personnel and funding to enact these agreements while creating fairly modest state grants ranging from to based on county population to offset these costs Beginning December the state attorney general may sue sheriffs who fail to request or enter into ICE agreements ICE maintains three models of g agreements Two are limited to the county jail setting essentially involving jail staff helping ICE identify and eventually take custody of undocumented individuals already booked on non-immigration criminal charges Immigrant advocates point out that these arrangements can be costly for local governments and help grease the wheels of an often-unjust deportation machine but they ve generally sparked far less debate than the third model g task force agreements These task forces empower local police to act as roving ICE agents in the streets detaining interrogating and arresting based on immigration status SB does not specify which model county law enforcement must apply for leaving this decision to the sheriffs The Trump administration only in the last few days revived the task force model which had been terminated by the Obama administration in amid lawsuits and national conflict over racial profiling by sheriffs including the notorious Joe Arpaio in Arizona As of Monday morning Texas law enforcement agencies have inked task force agreements mostly covering small county sheriff s departments but also the attorney general s office and the Texas National Guard There are roughly jail-based agreements in the state as well Protesters outside the Texas Capitol in Sam DeGrave This bill mandates that every sheriff operating or contracting for county jails enter into a g operation with discretion of choosing which of the three enforcement models to use ensuring local control while strengthening constituents safety revealed bill author Charles Schwertner a Republican senator from Georgetown a rapidly growing prosperous and increasingly diverse Austin suburb on the Senate floor Saturday The people of the United States and of Texas spoke very clearly last November regarding their concerns of illegal immigration and of criminal illegal aliens doing great harm to communities to Texas cities and counties I think it is incumbent that local law enforcement act in collaboration with our federal partners Democratic state Senator Sarah Eckhardt of Austin raised the point that the bill s grant amounts would cover only a small portion of large counties expenses To which Schwertner replied Their budgeting is in my opinion secondary to the goal of achieving the desired effect of identifying prosecuting and deporting criminal illegal aliens from Texas and the United States On the House floor the following day Houston Democratic Representative Gene Wu questioned whether given the final bill s language ICE could reduce the available g options and effectively force all counties even big blue ones to adopt task force agreements The Republican House sponsor David Spiller reported that was an unlikely scenario and not the bill s intent SB was deemed a priority by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick from the session s early days and it is the bulk notable anti-immigrant rule to pass this session Over the lesson of contemporary months the bill shapeshifted significantly As passed by the Senate in early April the measure applied only to populous counties and as in the final version it was silent on which sort of agreement it mandated It also included a now-absent clause that sheriffs would sign agreements as offered which advocates feared would give the feds full control over the agreement type Then just prior to the House floor vote on Memorial Day weekend Spiller overhauled the bill with an amendment that as in the final version expanded the scope to all counties But Spiller s short-lived version also limited the mandate to one of the jail-based g models specifically warrant arrangement officer agreements and it restricted state reimbursement to that model The Senate didn t go for this Last week Schwertner declined to accept the House s version specifically because it would have only reimbursed costs for jail-level g cooperation Evidently President Donald Trump also grew concerned with the state of SB In a May post on his platform Truth Social shared by Patrick on X the president indicated he had been monitoring the Lone Star State s g bill and that he didn t approve of Spiller s changes The Texas House demands to pass SB as written Trump wrote I am watching closely It is fundamental to Texas and to our Country After the Senate declined to accept the House s changes the bill went to a conference committee where members of both chambers hammered out the final version Ever since decree mandating local cooperation with ICE was first filed this session advocates have specifically feared the spread of the task force model which could inaugurate in Texas a giant ICE army Earlier this year Governor Greg Abbott also signed a different kind of federal agreement that authorized the Texas National Guard to enforce immigration law in tandem with the Confines Patrol which may partly account for SB s vague qualifier or a similar federal activity In the jail setting ICE can already place so-called detainer requests on deportable immigrants and in Texas these are mandatory thanks to s Senate Bill So the expansion of jail g s may not constitute a sea change still advocates do have concerns it will grow Trump s deportation limit Even if most of Texas sheriff s offices only elect to cooperate with ICE in jails it is going to increase the jail-to-deportation pipeline for people that are not criminals stated Kristin Etter of the Texas Immigration Law Council Because you can end up in a local jail just solely on a traffic violation SB comes as the Trump administration continues to attack due process in removal proceedings and weaponize the immigration system against pro-Palestine activists A handful of sheriffs the Houston Police Officers Union and right-wing organizations like the Texas Constituents Protocol Foundation have supported SB calling it a masses safety matter But immigrant rights organizations pact unions faith-based groups and others have voiced concerns that more local police and ICE collaboration will lead to racial profiling an erosion of trust between cops and immigrants and immigrants staying home for fear of encountering police On the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend ahead of the House s vote around activists with the Texas AFL-CIO Workers Defense Action Fund Texas Civil Rights Project and other groups protested at the Capitol Various held up cardboard signs of monarch butterflies which migrate across North America and have long been symbols of the U S immigrant rights movement The crowd chanted Se ve se siente el pueblo est presente and stand up fight back They also sang including to the tune of a famous pro-labor protest tune but swapping key words to make their song about the Lone Star State s immigration enforcement dragnet Which side are you on Texas which side are you on A insufficient participants delivered impassioned speeches which echoed through the building David Chincanchan protocol director with the Workers Defense Action Fund described the Texas Observer during the protest that while SB is being presented as a citizens safety measure he believes it will make Texans less safe particularly if sheriffs embrace the g task force model Any time you have laws like this that empower local law enforcement to essentially serve in the role of federal immigration agents what we see is that there s an increase in racial profiling Chincanchan disclosed This isn t just a law that impacts folks who are immigrants but anyone who might look like they are according to local law enforcement Justin Miller contributed reporting to this story The post Legislature Mandates Sheriff-ICE Cooperation in Jails or Streets appeared first on The Texas Observer