BROWNSVILLE - As Texas legislators moved last month to try to include immigration enforcement in the responsibilities of local police departments, area officials insisted the differences between communities would make it almost impossible to implement those laws uniformly.

In Brownsville, a losing competition for staff with the Border Patrol and the city's daily flow of both legal and undocumented immigrants has resulted in a police department with barely enough personnel to carry out its regular duties.

Rep. Frank Corte Jr., R-San Antonio, and Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, both of whom take a hard line on immigration, have sought an opinion from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on whether the Legislature has the authority to invalidate "sanctuary" policies.
In Brownsville, as in hundreds of cities across the country, such unwritten laws allow officers to practice a "don't ask" policy regarding immigration status.

"In these cities, if someone's suspected of violating immigration law, (police officers) won't go after them," Corte said. "That's amazing to me, because any law should be upheld. The question is, can we create laws that prevent sanctuary cities?"

Sanctuary laws, so-named because they provide safety for undocumented immigrants who may be crime victims, allow those individuals to benefit from the protection of law enforcement without risk of deportation. Without such laws, victims of rape or those with important knowledge of criminals might not risk interacting with police.

Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia says the policy responds to an important logistical need as well: The understaffed department has struggled to compete for employees with the Border Patrol, which pays a starting salary of $35,595 to the police department's $28,131.
With the city's estimated 20,000 undocumented immigrants, Garcia said, adding immigration enforcement to their workload is simply unrealistic.

"I would hope if anybody would place that burden on local law enforcement, they would give us the money and the manpower to do it," Garcia said.

Local police untrained in immigration enforcement also could face the risk of being accused of racial profiling, a strategy regularly used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if they ask for immigration status, some observers say.

Garcia said that with Brownsville's 95 percent Hispanic population, profiling likely would be based on economics, rather than race.

Though Corte and Patrick's opinion request did not provide budget or staffing solutions, they point to a new ICE program as an example of a federally funded initiative that provides immigration enforcement training to local police. To date, 62 departments across the country have participated in the program, three of them in Texas.

Though the legislator's letter of request names the ICE program as an example of federal-state collaboration, it provides no qualitative assessment of the program's success.

Garcia estimates that about 5 percent of those booked in Brownsville's jail are found to be here illegally and are taken into federal custody.
The Brownsville chief said he does not plan to participate in ICE program and hopes the AG's final opinion will deter Corte and Patrick from pursuing anti-sanctuary legislation when the Texas legislative session begins in January.

"If we had the responsibility of enforcing federal laws, it would not only change the demographics of this community," Garcia said, "it would deteriorate the relationship between the police and its citizens. If we take on both, they won't support us. They'll be saying ‘here comes the two-headed monster.' "