City and county officials are scrambling to interpret an immigration bill headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk that could have major implications for local law enforcement and Bexar County’s judicial system.
Senate Bill 4, approved by the Texas House Tuesday night during its fourth special session, would make illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border a state misdemeanor. It would also create new procedures for arrests, fingerprints and background checks of suspected border crossers, as well as the appearances before a judge or a magistrate.
Bexar County is home to roughly 80,000 undocumented immigrants, according to Migration Policy Institute.
People who crossed the border more than two years ago wouldn’t violate the new legislation, according to the bill’s author, because they will have already exceeded the statute of limitations a Class B misdemeanor.
Bexar County estimates the new policies would cost local taxpayers $21 million per year, “along with legal costs which are too large to quantify, “according to a fiscal estimate provided Wednesday.
Immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government, as was confirmed by the Supreme Court by a 2012 decision in Arizona v. United States, and Senate Bill 4 is likely to face legal challenges. The League of United Latin American Citizens has already asked the Department of Justice to intervene and threatened to sue if it is signed into law.
It’s unclear how big of a role the San Antonio Police Department and the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office would play in enforcing the new law. Both were still analyzing the legislation Wednesday.
“I just don’t see us going out and becoming shock troops for immigration laws,” Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told the San Antonio Report. “There are still laws against racial profiling. … I don’t think that we would ever get to a point realistically where we’re just gonna start randomly approaching people [to check their papers]. We don’t have time for that.”
Salazar said it’s unclear if officers would be required to check the immigration status of crime victims, but “I can’t see us ever, in good conscience, doing something like that,” he said.
Last year San Antonio had to pay $300,000 to settle a pair of lawsuits alleging the city violated the state’s “sanctuary city” ban, which compelled local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. SAPD caught a man smuggling 12 suspected undocumented immigrants and released the migrants instead of detaining them for federal immigration officials.
With that experience in mind, San Antonio’s government relations team pushed lawmakers to specify that SB 4’s enforcement would be up to the Texas Department of Public Safety. However, the change was not included in the final bill.
“The city’s going to review potential operational impacts” of the legislation, SAPD Deputy Chief Jesse Salame said, declining to comment further. “We’re still unpacking it.”
Unfunded mandate
Bexar County estimates that if 8,000 immigrants were arrested under the proposed law, it would need a new county court, four additional misdemeanor prosecutors and one more bailiff. Court-appointed attorney costs would run about $2.4 million, according to county estimates.
It’s unclear how much money the state might kick in to cover those costs.
Lawmakers approved a separate bill on Tuesday to spend $1.5 billion on additional border barriers.
That bill was amended to include language proposed by state Rep. Tracy King (D-Uvalde) that would allow an unspecified amount of that money to be spent helping local governments pay for enforcement of SB 4, according to the Texas Tribune.
Bexar County has a budget of $2.96 billion for the 2024 fiscal year. It estimates the administrative costs of 8,000 arrests would require a tax increase of $0.011 per $100 of assessed value.
The county anticipates the bill would necessitate a 20% budget increase for county courts, a 1% increase for the district attorney’s office and a 9% increase for the sheriff’s office.
Salazar said he worries the cost would be more than just a financial burden on already overburdened court and jail systems. The sheriff’s department has been chronically understaffed despite numerous efforts to increase salaries and beef up recruitment.
“[Increasing the jail population] is the last thing that I want to be doing right now, especially with people that are not dangerous,” Salazar said.
Legal questions
City officials said their initial conversations with the bill’s authors indicated the intent was for the Department of Public Safety to enforce its provisions, not local law enforcement.
But they’re concerned the 2017 law that forced cities to comply with federal immigration authorities could be interpreted to apply to this new law as well.
“When the feds ask us, we already have an obligation. That’s the current status of the law,” said Liz Provencio, an attorney for the City of San Antonio. “We want to be sure that the state offense doesn’t put an additional obligation on us to enforce with state law enforcement.”
One of the bill’s most perplexing elements, Provencio said, is a requirement that local governments pay for the legal defense of officials or employees who are charged with a crime in the course of enforcing the law.
“I can’t think of another circumstance where a local entity is required to fund the criminal defense of an employee or official, because presumably if somebody is charged with a crime, it’s not in furtherance of their city duties,” Provencio said.
Bexar County’s fiscal analysis for SB 4 notes that provision makes its difficult to say what the total cost to local governments might be.
“Because the bill waives the State of Texas’ tort limits, the larger issue is that it requires taxpayers to cover indemnification costs for law enforcement officers at a cost that cannot be estimated, it will be astronomical,” the analysis stated.
