Austin police chief hopes to quell immigration concerns
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Police Chief Lisa Davis sat down with KXAN to discuss federal immigration operations in Austin shortly after she met with a group of local pastors to discuss the same topic.
“There’s real fear,” Davis said.
KXAN Crime and Public Safety Reporter Brianna Hollis interviewed Chief Davis about this. The full interview is at the top of this article.
What is ICE doing in Texas? In Austin?
Late last month, ICE confirmed “enhanced targeted operations” in Austin as part of a nationwide effort to track undocumented individuals with serious criminal warrants.
Last week, the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council said, “it’s the really bad seeds that we’re trying to weed out here.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has also directed the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to assist federal officials.
“These teams will coordinate with Homeland Security agencies to track down the thousands of illegal immigrants with active warrants across Texas and deport them from our country,” Abbott said.
Chief Davis said she and her staff met with federal officials early on to discuss these operations. She told KXAN the notion of an uptick in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity is “perception.”
“[ICE] said, ‘look we’re out every single day, and we do call and let the watch commanders know we let people know we’re out,’ but it’s really more about just now talking about it and it being more in the forefront now,” Davis said.
Will the Austin Police Department ask about immigration status?
Watch the full interview with APD Chief Lisa Davis in the video player above
Chief Davis answered that question point blank: “We do not ask for immigration status.”
KXAN asked her this question in the context of someone getting arrested or pulled over. Davis said APD would not proactively notify federal officials if the department discovered someone was undocumented.
For further clarification, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office said that someone’s immigration status would enter a federal database once they get processed and fingerprinted at the jail. The agency also said undocumented individuals would proceed through the court system on their local charges before meeting with a federal judge on immigration-related matters.
‘Ask them these questions,’ Chief Davis says direct conversations between feds, concerned communities would be ‘beneficial’
When Davis told KXAN about her Tuesday morning meeting with pastors of primarily Hispanic churches, she said, “there’s real fear. They talked about not… sending their kids to school, not coming to church. They were offering free English classes, people dropped off from that. So there’s just this real fear. But I think it’s important to talk about.. when you’re looking at who ICE is picking up. It’s people with violent felonies.”
Davis said she’s working on meeting proactively with as many groups as she can to discuss these operations, but she hopes ICE or anyone with Homeland Security can get involved in these conversations.
“One of the recommendations I gave [the group of pastors] was ‘reach out to ICE. Ask them these questions. Maybe that would alleviate some fear as well, but the thing is, we have to be at the table and talk with people to understand what’s going on,” she said.
Insight on local immigration operations from a Customs and Border Protection official
Chris Cabrera, the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council – the union for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents – said he doesn’t know of specific criteria when it comes to which kinds of felony warrants ICE officials are pursuing.
“There’s not a dividing line, per se, but if you have somebody who has multiple felony convictions, somebody who’s wanted for murder or drug trafficking,” he added, providing examples. Some others he gave were:
- Violent felonies
- Crimes against women or children
- Child pornography charges
Additionally, a DPS spokesperson said, referring to anyone undocumented who gets arrested on new charges, “reporting illegal immigrants arrested for crimes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is handled by county jails.”
He also added how it would be possible for someone without a criminal warrant to get detained by ICE.
“The unfortunate consequence of some of this is that if you’re a bad guy with a criminal record, and you’re hiding at your grandma’s house, and she’s not legal, we can’t overlook that,” he said. “It’s collateral damage. It’s unfortunate that she’d have to go, but if you know you’re wanted, obviously don’t put yourself around those people, because you’re going to get them caught up in your nonsense.”
