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As the Houston Police Department chief from 2010 to 2016, Charles McClelland worked to make sure immigrant communities felt safe coming forward to speak to police and report crime. Now he’s watching Gov. Greg Abbott undo much of this work by signing Senate Bill 4, a new law that makes it a state crime to cross into Texas illegally from Mexico.
“I think about the consequences it’s gonna have on public safety,” McClelland said. “If I’m a person that’s here legally and my mom and dad came over illegally. My grandparents came over illegally. If they become a victim of crime, I don’t want them to report that. Because they’re putting themselves in jeopardy and harm’s way that they could get deported.”
Although proponents of the bill say it is meant to deal with the increase in border crossings, it applies across the state, so law enforcement in cities like Houston with large immigrant populations will have to decide how to enforce the law. Days after Abbott signed SB 4, which the governor and supporters say will keep Texans safe, local Houston law enforcement say the law risks having the opposite effect by straining resources and breaking down trust with immigrant communities.
“We’re here to help victims of crime. We’re not here to be the immigration police. It’s not our job,” said Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union.
SB 4, which greatly expands the role of state and local law enforcement in immigration arrests and deportations, comes at a time when resources are already stretched. Harris County Jail is notoriously overcrowded, and at least 62 people have died in custody from unnatural causes between 2012 and 2022. The jail remained out of compliance with Texas minimum safety standards as of August. Cases snaking their way through the Harris County court system face a two-year backlog. Appeals can languish for years. Evidence can take six months to two years to be analyzed in the crime lab.
“To have local law enforcement playing as immigration officers — a role they’re not trained for — is probably the worst thing right now for the criminal justice system as a whole here in Harris County,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo in a press conference, stressing that taxpayers would have to foot the bill for the additional jail costs.
Griffith agreed that SB 4 is a resource issue. “As far as Houston, we don’t have the manpower or the time to be able to do anything like that,” he said.
When new state laws such as SB 4 are passed, HPD’s legal department reviews the law and then issues guidance, Griffith explained. Although those guidelines have not yet been issued publicly, immigration enforcement, which falls to the federal government, is not a priority for the department’s already strained resources, said Griffith. “This department is not going to produce a task force to go after illegal aliens. It’s just not gonna happen,” he said.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office could also be overwhelmed by the new law, since the office would need to prosecute the cases.
However, the district attorney’s office could decide not to accept charges for illegal entry, classified as a class B misdemeanor under SB 4. This would mean police in Harris County could not arrest anyone for the crime because they need the DA’s office to accept charges first, explained Griffith. The district attorney’s office declined to comment while it is reviewing the law.
The Harris County’s Sheriff Office and HPD did not respond to requests for comments about their position on the law. However, they have issued progressive policies in regards to dealing with immigrant communities, such as the sheriff’s office limiting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement by ending in 2017 a 287(g) agreement to check the immigration status of people in their custody and hand them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
McClelland, the former HPD chief, said that trust with immigrant communities is key. “You want people to come forward and report a crime regardless of their immigration status,” McClelland said. State lawmakers have been “short-sighted” in passing the bill without thinking of how it would impact Houston and other cities, he added.
McClelland stressed the importance of each police department’s and sheriff office’s authority to issue guidance on how to implement this law, restricting its implementation if they see fit. This could mean some departments choose not to go after people for illegal entry. But others could enforce it broadly.
“Law enforcement across this country and across this state is not equal,” McClelland said. “There’s gonna be some agencies that I believe will overstep and be overzealous.”
Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said that immigration enforcement was not a priority of his office because of the strain on resources. His office will continue operating as it has before the law was passed, he said.
“I don’t worry about any of the sheriff’s deputies or any of the sheriffs asking their deputies to become immigration officers,” Hawthorne said. He added that the process and resources allocated to enforcement was not clearly laid out in the law. “From a sheriff’s association perspective, we’re not real confident that the process in the law will work very well,” Hawthorne said.
Brazoria and Fort Bend counties’ sheriff’s offices said that they are reviewing the law but could not yet comment. Montgomery, Liberty, Waller, and Galveston counties’ sheriff’s offices did not respond to a request for comment.
Whether the law comes into effect as scheduled in March is still uncertain because of legal challenges. Just one day after the governor signed the bill, the ACLU of Texas filed a joint lawsuit with other organizations challenging the law as unconstitutional because immigration enforcement falls to the federal government.
“The bill overrides bedrock constitutional principles and flouts federal immigration law while harming Texans, in particular brown and Black communities,” Adriana Piñon, legal director of the ACLU of Texas, said in a press release.
The ACLU of Texas has also urged the U.S. Department of Justice to sue the state of Texas. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a news conference Tuesday that “the federal court, not individual states, are in charge of determining how and when to remove non-citizens for violating immigration laws,” but added that the DOJ will ultimately decide whether to file a lawsuit. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment
Still, even with months to go before SB 4 takes effect, and multiple potential lawsuits looming, the measure is already worrying many Houston immigrants.
“After many years of trying to bridge the gap between the immigrant community and law enforcement, it feels like overnight this work has been undone,” Cesar Espinosa, director of immigrant-rights organization FIEL Houston, said in a statement after the signing of the bill.
However, he urged Houston’s immigrant community to remain calm since the law has not yet been implemented. “All we know is what the law reads and all we want to do is to begin to prepare our community for what may or may not come,” he said.
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