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Chambers County detective Cody Burk is looking for three types of contraband as he stakes out Interstate 10 on a Tuesday afternoon: drugs, money and people. 

A silver Toyota Highlander with Tennessee plates catches his eye, and he juts out onto the road in pursuit. 

“That could be a smuggler,” he says. 

As he catches up, he types the plate’s information into his Dell computer mounted to his right to gather intel. When he’s close enough to the car, he counts six people inside. One is a girl around 3 or 4 years old.

He signals for the driver to pull over, and the two cars come to a stop on the side of the highway. 

It’s his sixth stop of the day, and the first and only with the controversial Texas law known as Senate Bill 4 in effect. The law makes it a state crime to enter Texas illegally, and allows Texas law enforcement such as Burk to make arrests. It briefly went into effect on Tuesday while Burk was patrolling the interstate, only to be halted again hours later. 

While politicians oversimplify immigration enforcement with catchphrases like “send them back” and “secure the border,” Burk’s work provides a window into the complicated reality for Texas law enforcement who may eventually be tasked with implementing SB 4. Sheriffs’ offices across the state have wondered about the logistics of the law, from jail space to transportation costs. The state of Texas struggled to explain these details at a March 20 hearing to determine the future of SB 4, leaving sheriffs with no guidance. Regardless of their political beliefs about immigration, sheriffs’ offices are weighing whether arresting undocumented immigrants under SB 4 would be a productive allocation of resources or a distraction from other law enforcement duties.

Out here on I-10, Burk has to contemplate the realities of his job as Chambers’ County sole deputy patrolling the highway for smuggled goods. Where would he take undocumented immigrants after arresting them? How would they get back to the border? How is the county going to pay for all this? 

But another, perhaps more important, question looms over Burk as he makes a stop on Tuesday. If Chambers County’s only interdiction detective is spending his time arresting immigrants for illegally crossing into Texas, who is going to go after the people transporting loads of drugs, guns, and money? 

Patrolling the Interstate

Houston is a major transit point for drugs and other contraband being moved from the southern border to other parts of the country. Burk is the first line of defense for drugs and people heading east out of Houston and the last for loads of money that usually make its way back west. He’s equipped with a handheld X-ray device to identify hidden drugs, and a utility tool to pop open compartments and panels.

In his seven years in Chambers County, he estimates he has confiscated millions of dollars, hundreds of kilos of cocaine, marijuana and fentanyl, and hundreds of illegal firearms. He has probably stopped and questioned hundreds of immigrants in the country illegally, but he usually lets them go if they haven’t committed a state crime. 

Without SB 4, he has no legal grounds to arrest them. But that’s not the only thing that gives him pause. He also has to allocate his time wisely to go after the most serious crimes, and immigration enforcement is not his job. He used to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Homeland Security Investigations to pick up  immigrants in the country illegally, but they rarely showed up because of a lack of resources. 

“If there’s two or three illegals, I’m not going to call,” Burk said. “I know the answer.”

Burk said SB 4 could have been potentially useful in a few cases he investigated involving people he suspected of trafficking. SB 4 could have given him time and resources to further investigate them. 

“It’s like that scope and that X-ray. It’s a tool,” Burk said. “It’s not something I’m gonna use every time.”

After Burk pulls over behind the Highlander Tuesday, he switches on his body cam, checks for oncoming traffic, then gets out of his truck. He approaches the car, asks for ID, and begins his line of questioning. 

His Spanish is limited, but he’s learned a few key phrases to kickstart his questioning. “A donde vas?” and “De donde vienes?” usually does the trick. He pulls out his phone to use a Google Translate app when he needs to ask more questions or doesn’t understand someone’s answer.

Burk is looking for holes in the story or telltale signs that the car has been altered to hide drugs or wads of cash. He’s seen drugs hidden just about anywhere — the gas tank, a hollowed airbag compartment, a spare tire. Signs of people smuggling are different. They often have blankets, water bottles, and sunflower seeds in the car for the long journey. This car caught his eye because the back end seemed weighed down, which can be a sign of hidden people or a drug load.

“Is this your first time in Texas?” Burk asks. 

“Yes,” the driver answers in English.

“Are you transporting anyone illegally?”

“No,” he says. 

The driver’s story is vague, and has some holes in it. He went with his friends and one of their moms to visit Houston for a few days after visiting Nashville. The info doesn’t quite add up with the information Burk already has on the car. It drove into Texas from Oklahoma at 2 a.m. that morning.

Burk asks the rest of the group to exit the car: two men in their 20s, a man and woman in their late 30s or 40s, and the young girl. He pats each one down to make sure they aren’t armed, then has them stand outside the car as he does a search. 

Out here on the side of the road with cars whizzing past, Burk has two priorities: to make sure they aren’t transporting guns, money or drugs, and to guarantee the girl is safe. 

Does SB 4 change his work? 

These are the same steps Burk would take if SB 4 weren’t in effect. The Chambers County sheriff has not issued any new guidance to his deputies about the law, so they will continue to enact their policy of only arresting an immigrant if the person commits another state crime. The sheriff said he plans to wait to see how the legal case shakes out before changing the county’s approach. 

“The last thing we want to do is have deputies make those arrests on somebody being illegal only for it to get caught up in our court system,” Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said Tuesday after the law went into effect. “And then you’re wasting a lot of time, money and resources on a law that you don’t know where it’s going to stick in the first place.”

Hawthorne worries about the resources in his county, and how they are being allocated. His 221-person jail is already at capacity, even after the county got the go ahead to expand its bed space last year. If his 83-deputy sheriff’s office is going to be expected to arrest more people and then transport them to the border, he wants to know how they should do that and who is going to pay for it.

“There’s still a lot of unanswered questions on how the application is actually going to work,” Hawthorne said. “There’s still a bothersome aspect that there’s no additional financial resources to hold them as inmates because they’re not going to be able to make bond.”

He wants to keep his county safe and will comply with state law, but he also says that immigrants are not the people primarily responsible for crime in his county. This echoes a recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that analyzed incarceration rates over 150 years, which showed that immigrants do not commit crimes at higher rates than the U.S.-born population. 

To arrest or not to arrest? 

Burk shares some of the sheriff’s same concerns as he’s out on the interstate. 

After searching the car, he doesn’t find anything suspicious. He observes the young girl’s behavior. She clings to her dad as they stand outside the car. She seems comfortable with the people around her and doesn’t show any signs of being harmed. 

Some of the story seems questionable, but there’s no clear evidence of smuggling or any other crime. He has no other reason to believe that these five people and a young girl are a public safety risk. 

Burk knows the jail is full. He knows the county has no way to transport immigrants to the border. He knows there are other drivers on the road that likely have drugs hidden in their cars. 

Could he arrest them under SB 4? “Maybe,” he says. One of them didn’t show a U.S. ID. “But what are we gonna do with the kid then?” he adds. 

It’s just one of the many considerations that Burk and other officers would have to weigh if they decided to make an arrest under the law. 

Burk makes his call: He writes them a warning and lets them go. They get in their car and drive away. He does too. It’s the end of his shift, so he heads home.

When he makes his way back to the interstate for his next shift, SB 4 is no longer in effect. It’s just another day of searching for those same three things: drugs, money, and people.

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