{"id":6303,"date":"2017-01-27T20:24:23","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T20:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6303"},"modified":"2017-02-17T20:25:28","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T20:25:28","slug":"battle-over-sanctuary-cities-heats-up-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6303","title":{"rendered":"Battle Over Sanctuary Cities Heats Up in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Texas<\/a>

Texas is debating \u201csanctuary city\u201d policies, in which local law enforcement often refuses to turn over undocumented immigrants to federal officials. (arfo\/iStockphoto)<\/p><\/div>\n

by Mark Richardson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas<\/strong> \u2013 The fight over sanctuary cities in Texas has become a high-profile political battle between a county sheriff in Austin and Gov. Greg Abbott.<\/p>\n

The governor has vowed to withhold millions in state funds under a proposed \u201cSanctuary Cities\u201d bill if Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez keeps her election promise<\/a> to not enforce most federal immigration policies. Add to that President Trump\u2019s executive order this week to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities, and Cristina Parker, immigration programs director for the immigrant-rights group Grassroots Leadership, called the threats \u201cpolitical grandstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor has issued two main threats,\u201d she said. \u201cOne is to withhold state funds from Travis County \u2013 these are things that fund stuff like homeless programs, public-safety programs, needed money \u2013 to the tune of about $1.8 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbott\u2019s other threat is to remove Hernandez from office for not enforcing immigration policies. Parker said no law allows the governor to do that. Senate Bill 4<\/a>, with a legislative hearing next week, would define sanctuary cities as those that do not cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.<\/p>\n

Parker said state officials \u2013 and now the president \u2013 are trying to make an example of cities such as Austin, Dallas, Houston and others, for opposing ICE requests for immigration holds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard many other people describe it as the feeling that the governor is bullying our community and our local officials, who are putting in place policies that we demanded of them,\u201d she said. \u201cSort of an overreach, a little overstepping of bounds, to try to come and tell us what we should do in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said Hernandez mainly wants ICE to follow the same rules as any other law-enforcement agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe will work with ICE if they come with a warrant. They come with a warrant for someone, she\u2019ll honor that,\u201d Parker said. \u201cAnd every other law enforcement agency, they come with a warrant. And so really, Sally\u2019s just saying she wants ICE to have to follow that kind of due process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center lists 15 cities and counties in Texas among the 400 across the country it has identified as sanctuary cities.<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s statement is online at tcsheriff.org<\/a>. SB 4, the Sanctuary Cities bill, is at capitol.state.tx.us<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson AUSTIN, Texas \u2013 The fight over sanctuary cities in Texas has become a high-profile political battle between a county sheriff in Austin and Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor has vowed to withhold millions in state funds under a proposed \u201cSanctuary Cities\u201d bill if Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez keeps her election promise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6305,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions\/6305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}