RSSPolice chief defends his immigration law stance
Carolyn Hileman | February 2, 2008
Hurtt says HPD won’t train to help ICE enforce federal policy.
While a growing number of police agencies across the country have received federal training to enforce immigration laws, Houston’s police chief maintained a strong stance Thursday against joining this trend.
At least 28 state, county and local law enforcement departments have taken training to make immigration arrests and process illegal immigrants for deportation. More than 70 others are on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement waiting list for training.
But Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt made it clear Thursday that his department won’t be taking on ICE duties any time soon. Hurtt said enforcing immigration law in Houston would tie up officers and add long delays to police response times.
“Local police don’t want to be immigration officers, they want to be able to enforce (local) laws,” Hurtt told a state legislative committee.
Hurtt was the lead-off witness in a Thursday morning hearing by the Texas Border Security Task Force that focused on terrorism, illegal immigration and port and border security.
The chief told the task force, chaired by Houston state Rep. Rick Noriega, that Houston is not a sanctuary city, and he cited cooperative agreements the department has with ICE and the Justice Department. ICE agents are allowed into county and city jail facilities to question non-citizens who are arrested.
As he left the hearing, Hurtt said police don’t know the actual number of illegal immigrants in Houston or the Harris County area but said estimates range from 250,000 to 500,000.
“That’s a major city in itself,” Hurtt said. “If we had to enforce immigration laws the response time to emergency calls — which now we have around five-minute response time — could possibly go, with our present resources, go to 30 or 45 minutes. And I don’t think that’s acceptable to citizens of Houston.” He added that the longer response time would put people at risk.
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“If we had to enforce immigration laws the response time to emergency calls — which now we have around five-minute response time — could possibly go, with our present resources, go to 30 or 45 minutes. And I don’t think that’s acceptable to citizens of Houston.”
Gee, there, maybe if you started helping enforce immigration law you might not have so many “emergency calls”? Hmmmm? You’d get a lot of the trouble making illegals out of your city!