Another bill filed calling for immigration check

Two state senators filed legislation this week that would require law enforcement officers to inquire about the immigration status of people under arrest.

The proposal by Chris Harris of Arlington and Craig Estes of Wichita Falls, both Republicans, states that a person under arrest who is found to have violated civil or criminal immigration laws must be reported to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A bill filed Nov. 8 by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, goes further by requiring law enforcement officers to investigate the immigration status of anyone stopped, detained or arrested on other grounds.

But those bills would conflict with a practice already implemented at the Hidalgo and Starr county jails through ICE’s Secure Communities program, which scans the fingerprints of every new inmate, said Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño. The fingerprints are electronically compared with federal and state databases, helping to identify people with criminal records and those who have previously been arrested for illegally entering the country.

The proposed legislation would require his deputies become versed in immigration law that federal law enforcement officers spend hundreds of hours learning, Treviño said.

“It encumbers state and local officers to do a job that’s going to be done anyway,” Treviño said. “We have enough calls to answer without being detained by further questioning.”

The bill filed Wednesday by Harris and Estes is the latest in a line of measures aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. Lawmakers have also filed bills that will charge illegal immigrants with criminal trespassing for being in Texas, requires school districts to report the number of undocumented students enrolled and prohibits illegal immigrants from bringing claims in state court.

But when it comes to law enforcement, the Secure Communities program has proven to be the best indicator of whether a person arrested is in the country legally or not, Treviño said. In its first year of operation here, the program scanned more than 22,000 fingerprints, identified roughly 3,700 illegal immigrants and succeeded in deporting about 1,700 of them.

A spokesman for Harris, the highest ranking Republican in the state Senate, did not return phone calls seeking comment Friday.

State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, supports expanding the Secure Communities program beyond the county jails to municipalities to ensure those arrested for a crime aren’t released before their immigration status is checked.

But he said he believes local law enforcement officers should not be involved with checking immigration status other than when a person is arrested and booked in jail.

“Local law enforcement should be focused solely on those who are committing crimes instead of stopping and asking people their immigration status based on profiling,” Hinojosa said, referring to Arizona’s controversial immigration law. “The support may be there in the House (for that type of bill), but the Senate will focus on those who are here illegally and commit a crime.”

The Rio Grande Valley’s immigration advocacy groups are mobilizing support from local governments, businesses and others to oppose state bills that create “unintended consequences” here, said Michael Seifert, the coordinator of the Equal Voice Network, a coalition of 10 social advocacy groups.

Requiring local and state enforcement of immigration would undermine community policing and increase underreporting of crimes, especially domestic violence, according to the group’s immigration campaign. It would also undermine the effectiveness of police officers and strain them further when resources are already limited by budget shortfalls.

State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, said proposals that require all government documents to be printed only in English or that seek to end birthright citizenship guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution are “outlandish or plain unconstitutional.”

“I understand that the border needs to be secured, but you cannot secure it in a way that criminalizes everybody of Hispanic origin or by infringing on constitutional rights,” Lucio said. “This is a country built by immigrants, yet we want to take this huge step backward for them.”