City Council condemns anti-immigrant Senate Bill 4

Last year, the Texas Legislature passed one of its most extreme anti-immigrant laws yet: Senate Bill 4, which gives law enforcement the ability to arrest and hold people suspected of having entered Texas illegally. As the law’s enforcement still hangs in the balance, pending Department of Justice and ACLU of Texas lawsuits, the city of Austin has now passed a resolution condemning it, directing the Austin Police Department to deprioritize it and practice discretion with arrests should it go into effect, and directing the city manager to work with stakeholders to enact local policies shoring up protections for immigrant communities in Austin.

SB 4 is not currently in effect, as the Biden administration and several immigrant advocacy groups sued the state this year over its unconstitutional conflicts with federal immigration policy. Crucially, it lets state judges, who are untrained in immigration law, order people to return to Mexico without a court process and without the chance to seek asylum, a constitutionally guaranteed right. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in March to block the law while the ACLU and DOJ’s lawsuits unfold.

During testimony at Thursday’s City Council meeting, advocates from the Workers Defense Project – which recently successfully lobbied Dallas City Council to pass a similar resolution on June 12 – spoke in favor of the resolution.

“SB 4 is unconstitutional – the only way it can actually be enforced in a community like ours is by the blatant use of racial profiling and the violation of our civil liberties and rights,” said WDP’s David Chincanchan. “That’s why it’s important for you to issue a deprioritization memo and clarify APD standards for reasonable suspicion and probable cause.”

Should it be enforced, SB 4 would affect a wide swath of the Travis County population, the resolution notes: According to census data, approximately 17.4 percent of county residents in 2018-2022 were foreign-born, 52 percent of them having been born in Latin America. Equity Action’s Kathy Mitchell noted in her testimony that “SB 4 acknowledges implicitly that really, we’re not talking about violent criminals coming across the border. We’re talking about regular folks … and (SB 4 says) we need to find a way to be able to arrest them.” Daniela Silva, Workers Defense Austin policy coordinator, noted that she appreciates the resolution including language not only condemning SB 4, but actually having action tied to it to shore up immigrant protections locally – essentially, to make sure APD is following its own anti-discrimination rules. 

The resolution calls for APD to specifically “not inquire into the immigration status of a person who is a victim or witness to a crime, except if the inquiry will provide evidence pertinent to the criminal investigation, to assist with federal visas designed to protect victims, or if there’s probable cause the victim or witness has engaged in a separate criminal offense.” It prohibits, at minimum, enforcement in schools, places of worship, health care facilities, and SAFE-ready facilities, and directs APD to collaborate with the Office of Police Oversight and stakeholders including immigrant rights organizations to review, identify and amend gaps in General Orders 330 and 328 – APD’s policies involving interactions with foreign nationals and racial profiling. 

The resolution further directs City Manager T.C. Broadnax to organize Know Your Rights trainings, distribute multilingual information on those rights at community events and on the city website and prioritize funding in the Fiscal Year 2025 budget for the continuation of immigration legal services and outreach. Broadnax will have to report back to Council by this October on implementation of these priorities, or within 60 days should the courts decide SB 4 can be enforced.

“We will hold Council Members accountable to this resolution by ensuring they are doing everything in their power to ensure that if SB4 is implemented, the Austin Police Department takes measures to protect residents’ fundamental rights,” Silva wrote in a press release celebrating the resolution.

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