By Sean Murphy and Erik Verduzco -
The Associated Press
During the nine hours that Texas was allowed to arrest and deport people who had entered the United States illegally, Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland did not change his tactics toward migrants in his remote border county.
It wasn't because he was opposed to the idea.
There is simply no practical way to do it, said the chief of the Terrell County Police Department, where an average of 10 people a day were detained last year after crossing the border from Mexico.
“We don't have a van that we can use to transport people,” said Cleveland, whose county covers more than 50 miles of the border, most of which is an unforgiving rocky desert landscape.
Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, right, speaks with a recently detained Mexican migrant, Thursday, March 21, 2024, in Sanderson, Texas. Erik Verduzco / AP
The extraordinary expansion of Texas' immigration law was put on hold Thursday after a whirlwind of legal action that included the U.S. Supreme Court allowing it to take effect Tuesday and returning it to an appeals court for a new review.
Shortly before midnight, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals again put the law known as Senate Bill 4 (SB4) on hold.
The confusion along the vast Texas border during that brief period revealed that many law enforcement chiefs were unprepared, unable, or uninterested in enforcing SB4 in the first place.
For months, Texas has made urgent appeals to judges that the state cannot afford to wait for stricter border measures.
But given the opportunity to test Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's latest move to confront President Joe Biden's administration on immigration, there was no indication that any Texas law enforcement agency would try.
The defiant attitude of the Mexican Government, which said it will not accept any migrant that Texas tries to return across the border, and the caution of police agents generate an environment of uncertainty about what results would be obtained if it is fully implemented.
The law would allow any Texas law enforcement officer to arrest people suspected of entering the United States illegally.
But Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith, president of the Texas Association of Chiefs of Police, said the law will have little effect in his eastern state jurisdiction, which is much closer to Louisiana and Oklahoma than to Mexico.
“Our office is not going to have much to do with Senate Bill 4 unless we are working with one of our brother law enforcement chiefs on the border,” Smith said, “because you have to be able to demonstrate who came across the border illegally.
And unfortunately you can't do that this far into Texas without violating some of their rights.”
“If we start going and talking to everyone and asking for their documents, where do we stop?” Smith said.
Once detained, migrants could accept a Texas judge's order to leave the country or otherwise be prosecuted on lesser charges of illegal entry.
The law states that they must be sent to ports of entry along the US-Mexico border, even if they are not Mexican citizens.
Migrants who do not leave could be arrested again on more serious charges.
In court, Texas has argued that the law emulates the U.S. government's enforcement of immigration law.
The Justice Department has argued that it is a clear violation of federal authority and would create chaos at the border.
[Here's what's next for Texas' SB4 law, according to a constitutional lawyer]
Abbott reminded a crowd at a conservative convention in Austin this week that, even with SB4 on hold, Texas could still arrest migrants who trespass on private property.
That more limited operation began in 2021. On Thursday, the governor said that the fence that the state installed in El Paso was being renovated after a group of migrants broke through a barrier and eluded several members of the Texas National Guard who were trying to contain them.
Like many police chiefs and police officers who have said they support the new law, Cleveland faces serious logistical problems in how to implement it.
Their county has fewer than 1,000 residents, its jail holds only seven people, and the nearest port of entry is more than a two-and-a-half hour drive away.
“We will continue to do what we do: turn over the people we detain to the United States Border Patrol and then wait for the courts to figure out what they are going to do,” Cleveland reported.
Typical calls to the Cleveland office about migrants who may have entered the country illegally involve people who have crossed miles of desert with limited supplies and hoping to find work.
Responding to a landowner's call Thursday, Cleveland encountered a 32-year-old Mexican migrant trying to get to Florida to harvest strawberries.
He spoke with him in Spanish, asked if he needed food or water, and took him to a holding room in his office to wait for Border Patrol.
“The vast majority of those we catch, undocumented aliens,
are no different than you or me
,” Cleveland explained.
“I enjoy talking to them in Spanish, knowing where they are from, where they are going, things like that.”
Republican lawmakers wrote the law so it could be implemented in all 254 counties in the state, although Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said he expects it to be implemented primarily near the border with Mexico.
About 100 police chiefs visited the state Capitol in Austin on Wednesday to show support for Abbott for the new law, but their responses were mixed on how they would actually enforce it.
[AMLO warns before the Texas SB4: “We are not going to stay with our arms crossed”]
Still, fear among residents was palpable at a regular meeting held Wednesday at a community center in a southwest Houston neighborhood where many Latino and immigrant families live.
Police Chief Tony Finner received numerous questions about the law and what guarantees he could offer to people who now might not want to report crimes for fear of being arrested because of their immigration status.
A woman assured Finner in Spanish that she believes that
the new law is fracturing the relationship between the community
and the police, it is creating an image of the agents as the enemy, when in reality they are the ones who protect the population.
Ruben Perez, chief of the special crimes bureau of the Harris County prosecutor's office, tried to reassure residents, saying that the law has not yet taken effect and that the US Constitution protects everyone.
“We don't care if they are here legally or illegally, or if they came here legally or illegally.
“We are going to protect them
,” he stated, to which applause broke out.
“That is the message I want to leave.”