Photos of Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers making arrests across Central Texas have flooded social media this month, stoking fear and anger among immigrant communities and their supporters. Now, Austin activists are organizing to push back, pressing city leaders to draw clearer lines between local policing and federal immigration enforcement.
The urgency grew earlier this month after a Honduran mother and her 5-year-old daughter were taken into ICE custody following a disturbance call in Southwest Austin. Austin police said officers determined during their investigation the woman was the subject of an active ICE administrative warrant and notified the agency. That incident, along with reports of stepped up ICE activity across the country, prompted a few hundred Austinities to gather outside City Hall on Tuesday, demanding less collaboration between city authorities and federal immigration agents.
“We definitely are seeing a ramp up of ICE actions in Central Texas,” said Kate Lincoln Goldfinch, an Austin immigration attorney who attended Tuesday’s protest. “My clients are terrified. It’s really, really hard.”
Administrative warrants are formal documents that authorize federal agencies, including ICE, to make immigration arrests. Local advocacy group Hands Off Central Texas is calling on Austin police to stop aiding ICE with these warrants. After Tuesday’s demonstration, organizers delivered a petition signed by thousands of Austinites to City Hall in support of that demand.
“We have more than 10,000 signatures in less than a week of people who are extremely concerned about the impact of ICE,” said Sophia Mirto, the president of Hands Off Central Texas. “This is the beginning of a pressure campaign to get as much cooperation as possible from local government.”
Whether APD could legally implement such policies, even if city leaders agreed, remains an open question.
Looming over the debate is Senate Bill 4, the 2017 state law that penalizes local and state agencies for refusing to enforce immigration laws.
In a Jan. 14 memo, APD emphasized its obligation to comply with the law, stating saying SB 4 “prohibits policies that restrict communication or reasonable cooperation with ICE. Within the legal constraints, officers may exercise discretion, guided by existing policy and supervisory direction, when encountering administrative warrants. SB 4 significantly limits APD’s ability to systematically decline cooperation when federal immigration authorities request assistance.”
Texas State University criminology professor Brian Withrow said local law enforcement agencies in Texas have discretion over how they police. He described policing in the U.S. as a stratified system designed to balance power across different levels of government.
While state law can shape how a department operates, Withrow said local police ultimately answer to city leadership.
“The people who create the city council and elect the members have a legitimate right to decide what type of policing they want,” said Withrow, who worked in law enforcement for 20 years.
Since APD released the memo, Council Members Chito Velo, Vanessa Fuentes and José Velásquez issued a joint statement affirming that while compliance with SB 4 is required, public safety is the council’s top priority.
“That means Austin’s immigrant neighbors must feel safe calling the police without fear of deportation,” the statement read.
Goldfinch said the path forward is narrow but not closed.
“There are things that the city could be doing by focusing on constitutional protections,” she said.
“At the end of the day, what the Texas Legislature has done is made us all less safe.”
