Why Texans Are Fighting Anti-Immigrant Legislation
Originally published at www.nytimes.com on May 17, 2017.
Austin, Tex. — I’m a member of the Austin City Council, and this month Texas State Troopers arrested me for refusing to leave Gov. Greg Abbott’s office during a protest against the anti-immigrant Senate Bill 4.
The bill, which Mr. Abbott signed May 6, represents the most dangerous type of legislative threat facing immigrants in our country. It has been called a “show me your papers” bill because it allows police officers — including those on college campuses — to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest, or even simply detain, including during traffic stops.
This provision resembles those in laws passed in Arizona and Alabama in recent years, both of which inspired national scorn and were partially struck down when challenged in court.
But Senate Bill 4 goes even further. It essentially requires local law enforcement agencies to act as extensions of federal immigration authorities. The law provides for jail time, fines and removal from office for Texas authorities who refuse to take part in the immigrant deportation system in the way the law requires.
The assaults on our community that this law encourages are unacceptable. That’s why, alongside clergy members and community leaders, I participated in last week’s sit-in to send a message to Mr. Abbott.
I’m the son of immigrants, and I represent a district where more than one-third of residents are not citizens. I’ve seen firsthand the terror that this type of anti-immigrant legislation will cause in communities like mine.
During one of the immigration raids that took place in Austin this year, I sat in the living room of a constituent, an undocumented immigrant, talking to her young children. That day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had knocked on their door. The children were confused and fearful that they were going to lose their parent. The trauma of that day will stay with them.
As a consequence of Senate Bill 4, I fear that many children in our community will to experience this terror every time they see an Austin police officer. This is wrong. We fund our police to protect us from danger and defend our rights, not to tear apart families.
Make no mistake: Senate Bill 4 does not advance public safety. That’s why police chiefs from major cities in Texas, including Austin, oppose the law, saying it would drive a wedge between police officers and the communities they serve. The Houston police chief has reported a significant drop in the reporting of crime by the Latino community, and he attributes it to the fear generated by this kind of policy. Since the immigration raids in Austin this year, the city’s provider of sexual assault forensic exams has reported an 80 percent increase in sexual assault victims who weren’t willing to report their assaults to police.
I made my first presentation to the Austin City Council when I was a 21-year-old community organizer. Working alongside immigrant construction laborers, we moved the council to pass a law mandating a daily 15-minute water break for the people who labor in the Central Texas sun.
Since then, the immigrants’-rights and workers’-rights movements have grown in numbers and influence, in Austin and across Texas. Organizations led largely by undocumented families and communities of color, like the Workers Defense Project, the Texas Organizing Project and Grassroots Leadership, have waged successful campaigns to scale back deportation policies in Dallas, Houston and Austin area jails.
These groups are now at the forefront of the fight against Senate Bill 4. They’ve worked with elected leaders from across the state to announce their joint support for litigation to stop the bill before it can go into effect this September.
I wholeheartedly support this, and my colleagues on the Austin City Council are poised to vote Thursday to challenge the State of Texas in court. Our vote will also affirm that our police department’s mission is the enforcement of criminal laws, not federal immigration enforcement.
I hope that our vote will inspire more municipalities across the Lone Star State to draw a line in the sand and defend the rights of all of our community members.
But this is bigger than Texas. If Senate Bill 4 is allowed to go into effect in my state, we can expect similar laws across the country. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, recently called Texas Senate Bill 4 a “positive step” that “makes sense for the citizens of our country.” More than 50 similar bills are pending in dozens of state legislatures.
The racism and fear that play such outsize roles in support for this type of legislation, and in contemporary politics more broadly, must be confronted head-on. I believe that immigrants’-rights activists and elected officials together are up to the task. With Senate Bill 4, we’re faced with the threat of a continued cycle of political and economic disenfranchisement of working-class minority communities, and the tragic human consequences that suppression brings. There’s just one thing standing in the way: all of us.
Originally published at www.nytimes.com on May 17, 2017.
