Cruel Stunts at the Border Exhaust Taxpayer Dollars to Create Chaos in Texas Border Communities
For Immediate Release: December 18, 2023
TEXAS – Today, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 4, empowering Texas police officers to arrest and detain any person on the suspicion that they are undocumented and have crossed the border illegally. The new law allows for local police forces and judges to oversee federal immigration law. Untrained local judges would be authorized to order immigrants to return to Mexico.
Senator Roland Gutierrez issued a statement in response to Abbott’s signing of the controversial bill:
“Senate Bill 4 is unconstitutional, a recipe for racial profiling, and worse than Arizona’s Show Me Your Papers bill. It will not fix a broken immigration system, it will not secure the border, and it sure as hell will not keep Texans safe.
“Texans are sick and tired of the political stunts on the border and immigration. It’s time for real solutions. Congress needs to act, because immigration is the job of the federal government, not politicians in Austin. It is lunacy to empower a city cop to identify, detain, and immediately deport anyone they simply assume might be here without authorization. The way this bill is written, the local dog catcher can choose to deport you. This unconstitutional scheme by MAGA Republicans is nothing but cruelty and political theater made to score political points by terrorizing the Latino community, and I am going to keep fighting this bill with everything I’ve got.”
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