On a 20 to 11 vote, the Texas Senate passed a bill to abolish sanctuary cities across the state on Tuesday.
Senate Bill 4 requires local police agencies to enforce immigration laws at the request of federal officials. However, the Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe told KLBK and EverythingLubbock.com this bill will not create any changes for his department.
“None of this has a change or impact on what we are doing,” Sheriff Rowe said.
“As far as the Sheriff’s office is concerned and the Lubbock County Detention Center, we will be honoring holds and honoring detainees,” Rowe said. “We will utilize immigration custom and border patrol as necessary and when needed. Again, if an individual is identified during the course of initial contact and arrest and booking the same rules are going to apply.”
“We as sheriff’s or peace officers in general do not have the latitude to pick and choose what it is we enforce or don’t enforce,” Rowe added.
To become a law, this bill still needs to be passed through the Texas State House. Until then, Rowe said their officers will communicate with individuals as they normally would, and address the issue if it arises.
“I think everyone certainly recognizes there’s a tremendous amount of fear out there that all law enforcement is going to be out and hunting job sites, looking for individuals and all that,” Rowe said. “That is certainly not the case, we don’t even have the resources to do those kinds of things.”
“We are talking about what happens when, in the course of our normal operations, law enforceme nt comes in contact with any individual and during the course of police contact may or may not identify an individual as not having appropriate legal status within the country,” Rowe added. “At that point, it’s up to the federal agencies to address that and deal with it accordingly.”
