By Cody Copeland
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
CLEBURNE, Texas — Officers of the Cleburne Police Department on Friday attempted to allay fears among the city’s immigrant community that a state law making it a crime to cross the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas will lead to racial profiling and other discriminatory practices.
“We want folks to know that we’re here to protect and serve, regardless of their citizenship status,” said Cleburne Police Chief Rob Severance. “We also want everybody to feel secure living in our community. Whatever laws and politics and whatever else aside, we are here to protect and serve.”
Severance spoke to the Star-Telegram at an informational meeting organized by immigrant legal assistance organization Proyecto Inmigrante in the city of 32,000 people about 30 miles south of Fort Worth.
Known as SB 4, the Texas state law makes it a misdemeanor to cross the international border without authorization and authorizes police officers to carry out immigration enforcement.
Immigrant advocates have decried the law as unconstitutional and warned that it will lead to racial profiling across the state. It is set to go into effect on Mar. 5, but two lawsuits filed by the U.S. Justice Department and the American Civil Liberty Union could block its enactment.
Briana Perez, a supervision attorney with the immigrant advocacy group RAICES called the law unconstitutional and said that hers and other organizations are sounding the alarm about its possible consequences.
“If the law does go into effect, what we’re likely to see is really widespread and concerning racial profiling, and over-policing in particularly Black and brown communities,” she said in a phone interview.
Severance said his department’s policy “prohibits our officers from taking any enforcement action based solely on somebody’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, all of those things, so that’s not something that we do at all.”
He said he hopes the law does not deter Cleburne’s Spanish-speaking community from reporting crime or trusting in the local police force.
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“Victims of crime should never feel afraid to come to the police, and we want to make sure that they get the help they need,” he said.
Douglas Interiano, CEO and founder of Proyecto Inmigrante, said that he has received similar assurances from other North Texas police departments and city officials.
“They have told us that while the lawsuits are in the courts, it will be difficult for government institutions to enforce the law,” he said in an interview.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office has made similar assurances.
“Regardless of your immigration status, if you have not committed a crime and you are not subject to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer, you have nothing to fear about this Texas law,” the department said in an informative brochure.
But such assurances should be taken “with a grain of salt,” said Perez.
“SB 4 is really just another culmination of an increasingly dangerous rhetoric against immigrants and resulting anti-immigrant policy,” she said. “Even if individual city police departments, perhaps in the bigger cities or or even county sheriffs, state that they’re not going to enforce SB 4, there are statewide officials that have jurisdiction over all of Texas. So it doesn’t it does not mean that the danger is necessarily gone for a particular area.”
Proyecto Inmigrante has conducted similar information sessions in Fort Worth, Dallas, Grand Prairie, Sherman, Ennis and other communities in the region.
“The goal is to decrease fear in the community, to let them know that they are not alone and to inform them of their constitutional rights,” Interiano said.
Speaking before a crowd of around 70 mostly Spanish-speaking community members gathered at a church, Interiano informed attendees that they have rights under the U.S. Constitution regardless of their immigration status.
More than 30% of Cleburne residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census data.
Mario Valerio, an immigrant from Mexico, has lived and worked in Cleburne for three decades. He came to Friday’s session to address his worries about how the law might affect him.
“It wouldn’t be fair if after 30 years they just kick you out of the country,” said Martinez, 63, in an interview before the meeting.
After hearing from consuls from Mexico and El Salvador about the services their offices provide their citizens and a presentation via video messaging from a Homeland Security Investigations official on how to spot human trafficking situations, Interiano informed attendees of their rights in situations involving law enforcement.
He advised them to be respectful of law enforcement officials and never to run from them, and told them to ask for properly signed documentation in the event that they are presented with a search or arrest warrant.
He also told them of their right to remain silent and to legal representation, and advised them to never carry falsified documents, among other important things to understand with respect to the law and their immigration status.
Blanca Villasana, 50, has lived in Cleburne since she was three years old. She has documentation to live in the United States legally, but attended the meeting to gather information for her friends and family who do not.
“I feel good after hearing the information we were given,” she said in an interview. “I know lots of people who are worried about this law.”
The information on human trafficking felt oddly out of place to her, but she was glad she stayed until the end of the meeting. She only wished more in her community had come out to hear the presentation.
“For one reason or another, they just didn’t bring themselves to come,” she said.
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