Mapping the Movement: Texas

Civil Rights Groups File Challenge to Anti-Immigrant Ordinance in Texas

ACLU of Texas, Posted: Dec 27, 2006

American Civil Liberties Union of Texas
Contact: media@aclu.org

FARMERS BRANCH, Tex. – Today, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, along with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, filed suit in Dallas federal district court on behalf of Farmers Branch residents and landlords challenging the city’s recently adopted anti-immigrant ordinance.

“Immigration enforcement must be left to the federal government, not each local municipality,” said Lisa Graybill, Legal Director for the ACLU of Texas. “Otherwise Texas will end up with a patchwork system that is impractical and unenforceable, and in Farmers Branch, private landowners as well as tenants will pay an unfair price.”

The lawsuit charges that the Farmers Branch anti-immigrant ordinance runs afoul of federal immigration law and places landlords in the untenable position of acting as federal immigration officers. The complaint also alleges that the ordinance is so poorly drafted that it excludes even some authorized immigrants from renting in Farmers Branch apartment complexes.

“The Farmers Branch law is a botched attempt to force landlords to police immigration” stated Nina Perales, MALDEF Southwest Regional Counsel. “The Latino population of Farmers Branch is a strength, not a liability, and city leaders should not be wasting tax money to drive out people who help the city,” continued Perales.

The housing ordinance is scheduled to take effect on January 12, 2007.

Related articles
'Dallas suburb sued over anti-immigration law'


---------------------------------------------------


Cactus, Texas: Raids leave children stranded
Elena Shore, email: eshore@newamericamedia.org

The town of Cactus lost ten percent of its population in the raids, reports the San Antonio-based Spanish newspaper Rumbo.

The church of St. Peter and Paul, in the town of Dumas, just south of Cactus, has been one of the refuges for children whose parents were detained.

Church spokesperson Orlando Gajardo told the newspaper that more than 200 children were affected by the raid, many of them under 10 years old. In the best of cases, Rumbo reports, only one of their parents has been arrested or deported.

The day after the raids, 62 out of the 400 children enrolled at Cactus’s elementary school did not attend class, according to the newspaper. As of Saturday, Dec. 16, no representatives from Child Protective Services had shown up to look after children of those deported.

The majority of those arrested in the Cactus raids (200 of the 295 detainees) are from Guatemala, according to ICE.

Many of the children affected by the ICE raid are U.S. citizens. José Barillas Trennert, the Guatemalan consul in Houston, told Rumbo that he was offering to register the children as Guatemalans so they wouldn’t be taken under the care of the state.

According to the Consul, the majority of detained Guatemalans agreed to voluntary removal to avoid jail, Rumbo reports. “Those who have officlally been deported will be in Guatemala in three weeks,” Barillas told the newspaper.

-------------------------------------

From Cactus to San Antonio: A Dispatch
Barbara Renaud Gonzalez

When I was fourteen in 1968, my father moved my family to Cactus, Texas, where I began high school in Dumas. I was the only Latina in the freshman class at the time.

My father had decided on the eyeblink of a town across the border from Oklahoma because of the flourishing economy created by the many migrants who arrived in the summer to work in the agricultural fields. A former sharecropper, my Tejano father got a good job working construction, and he and my mother bought a four-bedroom home that had been remodeled from former World War II barracks.

The Panhandle where I grew up is famous for its cottonfields, tornadoes, and racism, all equally bountiful. Every day that I went to school there for eight years I was chased, ridiculed, trashed, scarred for being mexicana. We were a minority, not even 5% then, but I survived, though most of my friends didn’t. My brother Jorge is in prison because of it.

How times have changed, people say, but I don’t think they’ve changed at all. Cactus, an extreme land of hailstorms and sandstorms, has made the national news because there are now too many brown people. Recently more than 1200 Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants were caught in a six-state Homeland Security sweep at the Swift meatpacking plants that included Cactus, part of the largest-ever workplace crackdown in history.

And the brown people are being watched: A “virtual border watch” has just passed its stress test, as eight cameras along the Texas border recorded over 27 million hits. More cameras – perhaps as many as 200 – will eventually record immigrants crossing the border, drug smuggling and who-knows-what. By that time, in 2008, Texas will get 6000 more Border Patrol agents now recruiting near my house at Crossroads Mall in San Antonio as part of an anti-terrorism legislative package.

In Farmers Branch, Texas, one of the Dallas upper-class suburbs, a city resolution recently barring landlords from renting to illegal immigrants is the first of its kind in Texas, but, I suspect, not the last. Thirty percent of the people in Farmers Branch are Latinos.

Now we Latinos are easily 40% of the Texas population, everywhere, and, still, nowhere. If you come to the RiverWalk in San Antonio where I live, you’ll see people from all over Texas and the world feasting on our fajitas, margaritas, nachos and tamales. But the people serving that food, washing the dishes, cooking in the kitchen, are all brown. Some of them have papers, some of them don’t, of that I’m positive.

Has anyone told the tourists and the governor and the Border Patrol if they know who’s going to butcher their meat for their favorite meals with all those arrests in Cactus? Believe me, the people here like to chow-down. Maybe they know someone besides immigrants who want to do that dirty job, you think? Well, this is Texas, where now we have mayors and movie stars who speak Spanish, and gringos eat more tacos than me. But nothing has changed, and I don’t know when it will.

Barbara Reneaud Gonzalez is a consultant for the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, TX.

Read article "A day later, Cactus in quiet shock."

---------------------------------------------------


NALEO CONDEMNS PASSAGE OF ANTI-IMMIGRANT MEASURES  IN FARMERS BRANCH, TEXAS William Ramos, 202-546-2536, wramos@naleo.org

Resolution and ordinance will jeopardize health and safety of all city residents, and create risk of housing discrimination

Los Angeles, CA—The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund released the following statement regarding the enactment in Farmers Branch, Texas
of an “English only” resolution and a housing ordinance forcing renters to prove their immigration status:

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund condemns the passage of two measures in Farmers Branch, Texas – a resolution declaring English as the official language of the city, and an ordinance requiring renters to prove their U.S. citizenship or ‘eligible immigration status’ to property owners and managers.  These measures impose unfair, unworkable and unconstitutional restrictions, which will jeopardize the health and safety of city residents, impair the effective operation of the city and its services and subject the city’s Latinos and newcomers to discrimination.

“The ‘English only’ resolution will restrict a broad range of communications between city officials and residents in non-English languages, including the dissemination of vital information about health and safety issues, communications that help implement city policies, and the resolution of questions about city services.  While the measure contains an exemption for communications that ‘protect and promote the public health, sanitation and public safety,’ this language is simply too vague and would lead to confusion in situations where prompt action by city officials is needed. 

For example, city officials would be placed in the position of trying to determine whether they were violating the resolution if they provide emergency assistance in a non-English language during a natural disaster.  Health workers would feel constrained in disseminating non-English materials on public safety measures such as anti-drug initiatives or immunizations.

“Moreover, the ‘English only’ resolution does nothing to promote proficiency in the English language, which is the resolution’s stated rationale.  Our research on the availability ofEnglish-as-a-Second- language (ESL) classes nationwide demonstrates that newcomers are eager to learn English, but face long waiting lists and crowded classrooms.  The Farmers Branch resolution does not address the availability of ESL instruction in the city or propose effective measures to obtain more resources for ESL service providers.

The Farmers Branch anti-immigrant housing ordinance is also unfair and unworkable.  The ordinance forces renters to prove U.S. citizenship or ‘eligible immigration’ status, and penalizes landlords who fail to verify the immigration status of tenants.  This ordinance makes ‘immigration agents’ out of landlords, by requiring them to review documents and make decisions about matters for which they have no training. The determination of immigration status can be very complex, and property owners and managers could potentially violate federal prohibitions on housing discrimination if they discriminate against Latinos in an effort to comply with the ordinance.

Finally, the Farmers Branch measures have several constitutional flaws.  For example, the ‘English only’ measure violates First Amendment safeguards that protect residents’ rights to petition their government for the redress of grievances and to receive information and ideas.  The housing ordinance is subject to constitutional challenge because it is an attempt by the city of Farmers Branch to control immigration, which is a power exclusive to the federal government. Additionally, the ordinance may violate the due process rights of landlords and tenants.  If legal action is mounted against the city, Farmers Branch taxpayers will have to bear the costs of defending the city’s flawed measures.    

The measures enacted by Farmers Branch are part of a deeply disturbing trend among the nation’s cities, where several municipalities have either passed or are seriously considering similar ordinances, including Escondido and San Bernardino, California; Valley Park, Missouri; and Hazelton, Pennsylvania.  Newcomers across the country are making significant contributions to the economic, social and cultural life of their communities.  Our nation’s federal policymakers are currently involved in an extensive national discussion about how to fix our nation’s broken immigration laws, and this is the appropriate arena for the discussion to occur.  Cities that enact these types of ordinances will actually interfere with efforts to achieve fair, effective and humane immigration policies for newcomers to our country. 

The NALEO Educational Fund urges municipal leaders throughout the nation to fight the enactment of unfair and unconstitutional measures such as those passed in Farmers Branch. Instead, elected officials at all level of government should work for comprehensive immigration reform that provides law-abiding, tax paying immigrant workers and their families with an opportunity to pursue U.S. citizenship, and actively promotes the civic integration of newcomers. The NALEO Educational Fund has adopted principles that should govern this reform, and we believe it is the best way to protect our nation’s security and recognize the important role that immigrants play in the future growth of our nation.

About the NALEO Educational Fund The NALEO Educational Fund is the leading organization that empowers Latinos to participate fully in the American political process, from citizenship to public service. 





Page 1 of 1

Printable Version Return to Normal Version Send Page to Friend Subscribe to NAM Newsletters