This week, the Texas Senate is expected to make its first big vote during the 85th legislative session. The 31 State Senators are scheduled on Tuesday morning to discuss and debate Senate Bill 4 to ban sanctuary cities in Texas.
SB4 would punish local government entities and college campuses that refuse to comply with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) detainers. The detainers are requests from ICE to hold an arrested person in custody while ICE investigates their immigration status.
“Texas sheriffs, we’re for this,” Jackson County Sheriff A.J. Louderback said. “If you don’t do this, if you don’t create legislation to curb a lawless activity, you’re libel to have any number of elected officials, do any number of things that you can’t control, and that’s where legislation has to come in.”
Louderback is the legislative director for the Sheriff’s Association of Texas. He helped State Senator Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), the bill’s author, craft the legislation.
“We’re not making the immigration decision. That comes from ICE. But we are holding and allowing ICE to do their job which in turn reflects upon us and the citizenry,” Louderback said. “So that’s a requirement. That’s part of the law and what we should do.”
Louderback was one of the hundreds of people who testified before the Senate State Affairs Committee last week. The hearing lasted for more than 16-hours. After midnight, the senators chose to forego Friday’s scheduled follow-up hearing and approve SB4 in a 7-2 party-line vote.
“They voted in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness,” Manny Garcia, Deputy Executive Director of the Texas Democratic Party said, “while the very children that are going to be impacted by this legislation were sleeping.”
Garcia said rushing a vote means lawmakers aren’t giving Texans a fair shot.
“This is not who we are as a state,” Garcia said. “This is not who we want to be as a community.”
Garcia said banning sanctuary cities would lead to racial profiling and promote a mistrust between law enforcement and the community.
“It’s a terrible mess,” Garcia said. “Session after session after session we have seen legislation like this come and fail. It has failed because it is bad policy. It’s that simple.”
Governor Greg Abbott declared a statewide ban on sanctuary cities as one of his four emergency items this legislative session during his State of the State Address on Tuesday.
Right now Republicans hold a strong majority in the Texas Senate with 20 of the 31 seats.
Once the senate votes on the bill it will be sent over to the house chamber. The bill will then be assigned a committee for discussions and hearings. That process could take up to several weeks before the full house considers the bill on the floor.
