Texas police express confusion over new immigration law
Brad Coe, the sheriff in Kinney County along the Texas border, woke up Wednesday with one destination in mind: Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.
Sheriff Coe is the lead law enforcement authority in a largely rural county that has embraced the state’s effort to stem the sharp increase in migrants from Mexico. He said he was done with the many confusing legal orders issued on the law in the past 24 hours.
He wanted to hear it from Governor Abbott himself. “I’m on my way to his office now,” he said.
He summarized the conflicting guidance on whether his department had the legal authority to arrest migrants who entered the country illegally under the terms of the new law.
The Supreme Court ruled ‘yes, we can’ he said, referring to Tuesday’s decision. “But a lower court said, no, we can’t do that. The Supreme Court is believed to be the highest court in the land. Something is wrong.”
Police departments across Texas, both near and far from the border, expressed confusion about how to proceed after the Supreme Court briefly allowed the new law to take effect Tuesday — only to have it halted again by an appeals court.
On Wednesday morning, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard more arguments from both state and federal governments on whether it should go into effect. Many police forces said they would pay close attention to the panel’s ruling before unveiling their plans.
The bill, known as Senate Bill 4, would make it a state crime to enter Texas from Mexico anywhere other than through a legal port of entry. The first arrest would be considered a misdemeanor and then a misdemeanor.
State police have not provided any public indication of how or when they would begin enforcing the law if it eventually takes effect. Abril Luna, a spokeswoman for police in Brownsville, on the border, said that regardless of the ruling, she did not expect daily operations to change dramatically. “If the law is passed, it will obviously be enforced, just like all other laws in Texas,” Ms. Luna said.
Jodi Silva, a spokeswoman for police in Houston, Texas’ largest city, said they too would decide what action to take after a new court order is issued. “We are also monitoring and seeing which way we go,” Ms. Silva said.
In San Antonio, Javier Salazar, the sheriff of Bexar County, which includes that city, has issued a policy manual directing his deputies to enforce the law without engaging in racial profiling, which many critics of the law say would happen if the state and local police are trying to determine who may have entered the country illegally. Officers who make arrests will base them “on probable cause supporting the elements of the crime and not on national origin, immigration status, ethnicity or race,” the report said.
Back in Kinney County, Chief Coe, whose office employs six deputies, said the long list of aggressive border security measures Mr. Abbott has adopted in recent months, including placing concertina wire along the Rio Grande and a heavily armed law enforcement presence on parts of the border, appears to have deterred people from crossing the border. Last year, his deputies arrested up to 20 migrants a day. More recently, he said, “we’re lucky if we get a maximum of two or three a day.”
He said he hoped SB 4 would pass, not because he wants to arrest migrants, but because it would act as a deterrent. “People wouldn’t come anymore because it’s against the law,” he said.