Let's see if I can be a little less braindead in resummarizing what's going on here.
- This is about Trump's first set of executive orders on immigration. Not the one closing the borders and trapping people in airports, the earlier one about "cracking down on sanctuary cities" that I think most media glossed over.
- What Trump & co. say they want to do is make all levels of law enforcement have to answer to Immigration (and Homeland Security). Anyone who happens to be arrested for any reason or charged with any crime (not convicted!) can be held
indefinitely, outside of the normal due process, if Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes a request to hold them and "investigate their immigration status." In practice this is the same thing the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio did during his tenure in Arizona: racial profiling runs unchecked and anyone who doesn't look white can find themselves jailed for days, weeks or months, with few legal recourses.
- Except even worse, because the suspects have to be held in jail at the expense of local law enforcement, local law enforcement are the ones on the liability hook if they wind up detaining someone who turns out to be here legally and sues in response, and having such a detainment policy in place makes people (especially immigrants, legal or illegal) less likely to report crimes or cooperate with local police. Lots of jurisdictions hate them, and Obama's administration was trying to more or less phase them out and get a different system in place.
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Federal courts have ruled that compliance with these orders is voluntary for local law enforcement, detainee's Fourth Amendment rights are definitely violated if they are actually held beyond their otherwise normal release date, such requests require probable cause to be issued in the first place, and it's disputable if ICE has authority to issue them even *with* probable cause.
Some more stuff on how Trump is changing the policies here. - Conservatives label cities whose police departments do not comply with these orders as "sanctuary cities" where illegal immigrants are free to rape and murder honest Americans.
- Sally Hernandez ran for Travis County Sheriff on an explicit platform of stopping these detainment requests and only detaining people who are actually convicted of something, or who are accused of a capital crime (murder, sexual assault, or human trafficking). This was and remains very popular with Travis County voters - she was elected with 63% of the vote, and is (quite rightfully imo)currently claiming that she is acting fully within the law, protecting everyone's constitutional rights, and has a mandate from the voters to do so.
- Governor Greg Abbott disagreed and tried to order her to comply anyway (despite the fact that being governor gives him no legal standing to do so). When she still refused, he threatened to cut off all state grants and funding to Travis County law enforcement programs, and to remove her from office (despite the fact that he has no legal standing to do so). When she *still* refused, he followed through on cutting the funding, and is seeking to remove her by asking the state legislature to make a new law empowering the governor to remove and replace any elected official who does not comply with ICE requests. The bill is being fast tracked, declared an emergency item, and cleared out of committee today (yesterday by the time anyone reads this).
Even Fox News is astonished at the level of bullshit on display here. It is clearly what one might call Hella Unconstitutional to depose an elected official in this way - the Legislature does not have the legal standing to do it or empower the governor to do it either - but that isn't stopping them from trying.
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The outcome of this struggle is likely to shape national precedent for how law enforcement agencies and local authorities respond to Trump's executive orders, and is a test case for the possibility of conservative governments ousting elected officials for noncompliance without due process or legal backing. This is really, really important and potentially *the* case that determines how far authoritarianism in the US can go right now. - AND! Regardless of the outcome of Abbott vs Hernandez, oops, all the state grant funding for Travis County agencies got cut off.
All of it. Not just the Sheriff's department. Everything from the DMV offices to police salaries to substance abuse programs to National Guard veteran's benefits has been defunded, and will be defunded for at least a couple of months - even if Abbott had a change of heart tomorrow morning, returning the grant funding is a lot more difficult and time consuming than stopping it was. It may even need total reapproval from the Legislature. If, yknow, they were inclined to do that. A huge number of people are going to be hurt by this, no matter what else happens now, and that's why Hernandez, Austin's US Rep Lloyd Doggett and the Democratic Party are setting up this crowdfunding campaign to try and help the county remain somewhat functional.
If you have money you were considering donating somewhere, please consider this. I'd say "even if you aren't Texan, call Texas officials about this" except it's unclear who you would even call, and the lines in the sand are pretty much drawn already. This is like 10000000 "strongly worded statements" level of importance though.
BONUS RICK PERRY TAKE: 'Perry said the blame for that and any subsequent action in other parts of Texas aren’t the state’s fault.
“The state did not remove those funds,” he said. “The action of the jurisdiction, their decision to violate the law” did.'
PS.
Hey kid wanna read some Breitbart? You really don't, but Hernandez is getting a lot of death threats, in case you were wondering.
