More than a thousand people legally cross the Mexican/American border in Juarez/El Paso on a daily basis. (Lucinda Holt/The Hub@TTU)
The politics at the core of this multifaceted immigration issue parallel the contrasted views of Texas’ population. As Republicans and Democrats clash over the law in court, the lives of those at the heart of the debate may be easily forgotten.
Following the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform Act of 1996, Nadia Flores-Yeffal, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Social Work at Texas Tech, said designated state and local law enforcement agents took on additional roles in immigration.
“The issue of immigration has always fallen on the shoulders of the Department of Homeland Security,” Flores-Yeffal said. “The concept of sanctuary cities is a direct consequence of the Illegal Immigration Reform Act of 1996 being signed and enacted.”
Through this legislation, she said the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is permitted to form agreements with state and local agencies to select officials to serve as cross-designated officers who are then trained and supervised by ICE agents.
Under Section 287(g) of the act, she said the limitations and breadth of the delegation of the authority to enforce immigration laws are defined.
In counties without these agreements, she said unauthorized immigrants can use emergency services available to the public without the fear of having their legal status questioned.
ICE has 287(g) agreements with 75 law enforcement agencies in 20 states and has instructed and certified more than 1,822 local and state officers to enforce immigration law, according to the ICE website. Including the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office, Texas has more law enforcement offices with 287(g) than any other state.
“In general, this particular issue is not prevalent everywhere (in the United States),” Flores-Yeffal said. “But in states like Arizona, Texas and California, state leaders are expected to take a stance in one way or the other.”
Politically Speaking
Jimmy Carter was the last Democratic Presidential candidate to win the state of Texas in 1976, according to The San Antonio Express-News. In the last 16 elections dating back to 1952, Texas has been won by a Republican 12 times. Although it is believed that the state’s major cities would favor conservative local leadership, research has shown the opposite to be true.
In the last 16 elections dating back to 1952, Texas has been won by a Republican 12 times. Above is a side-by-side comparison of the 1976 and 2016 election results of Texas per county.
Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas – mostly under Democratic leadership – have taken action by joining a lawsuit that adjures strike down Senate Bill 4, a controversial immigration law that was signed by Governor Greg Abbott in May 2017, according to The New York Times.
SB 4 prohibits cities and counties from implementing policies that limit immigration enforcement and allows local law enforcement officials to question the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest, according to The New York Times. Officials who violate the law potentially face fines, jail time and/or removal from office.
In August 2017, Judge Orlando L. Garcia of United States District Court for the Western District of Texas granted a preliminary injunction, preventing the law from going in to effect while the suit is still being contested.
The litigation against SB 4 seeks to determine where the boundaries lie between federal immigration policy, the powers of state law enforcement and the discretion to pursue public safety at the local level, said Miguel Levario – associate professor in the Department of History at Tech.
If Abbott and Texas Republicans plan to constrain counties without section 287(g) agreements to enforce federal immigration law, he said they stand on the precipice of a arduous legal battle.
In April 2017, Levario announced he would campaign for the Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. District 19 seat in the 2018 election, the position currently held by first-term Republican U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington.
Photo courtesy of Levario’s campaign website.
“The rhetoric utilized by Republican leadership to raise doubts about the aspect of safety is inaccurate because sanctuary cities have less violent crime,” Levario said. “Immigrant communities are almost always ranked as low-crime areas, like the city of El Paso for instance. It’s situated right on the border, has sizable population of unauthorized immigrants, but for years it has been ranked as one of country’s safest cities.”
The Republican strategy of combatting this issue has mainly focused on instances of an immigrant committing a violent crime and framing it as justification to advance their agenda, he said.
Moving Forward
In a speech on the House floor in June 2017, Arrington gave special recognition to 121 deaths caused by “criminal aliens” from 2010 to 2014. Legislation cosponsored by Arrington, known as the “No Sanctuary for Criminal Act”, sought to “impose significant penalties on states and cities that refuse to follow federal immigration laws and cooperate with authorities,” according to a press release from his office.
Photo courtesy of CSPAN.
“These avoidable tragic deaths and violent crimes continue to happen across the country, and many of the criminal aliens who have committed them have found refuge in our nation’s sanctuary cities,” Arrington said during his speech. “These are lawless cities, let’s be clear. Cities (whose) actions undermine the basic American tenant that we are a nation of laws, not of men.”
A reporter from The Hub reached out to an official from Arrington’s office for comment, who in turn forwarded a June 2017 press release detailing the legislation.
Arrington also co-sponsored the “Davis-Oliver Act”, an immigration reform bill that aimed to give local and state jurisdictions permission to create and enact immigration laws more consistent with federal laws to assist the federal government in enforcement, according to the release. The act would also expand the list of deportable offenses and increase expedited deportations, while also blocking visas to countries that decline to repatriate deported individuals.
Levario said the incumbent’s legislative reform efforts would only serve to further plague an over encumbered and backlogged law enforcement system by housing individuals who are being detained on suspicion of being an unauthorized immigrant.
“Even the term ‘sanctuary city’ itself is problematic because it’s been politicized to such an extent,” Levario said. “Make no mistake, any crime committed by an unauthorized immigrant will still be reported and fully prosecuted in a sanctuary city, just as with every other city in America. Sanctuary cities still detain and deport undocumented people on a regular, consistent basis.”
By expediting the legal status of law-abiding undocumented citizens and allowing them access to tax benefits previously unavailable to them, Levario said he hopes to fix the nature of U.S. immigration, although, this approach does not equate amnesty for unauthorized immigrants. Also, he said employers that knowingly recruit and hire individuals with questionable legal statuses would also be subject to a fine for such an offense.
Regardless of where one stands on the sanctuary city debate, the overarching discussion has been marred by partisan motives, misconstrued rhetoric and argumentative dialogue, he said. It should be the duty of the federal government it to manage the border, not control it.
“To be clear, no Democratic lawmaker would willingly stick their neck out for violent criminals, and that’s not what I would do either,” Levario said. “Instead, we should simply dismiss the stereotype that any undocumented person is potentially a violent criminal.”
About Reece Nations: Undergraduate Managing Editor
