Sheriff: No deputies to work at detained-kids shelter

The sheriff in El Paso County, Texas, prohibited his deputies from working off-duty at a temporary shelter housing children, saying he refused to support President Donald Trump’s “unjust” policy of separating families at the border.

Sheriff Richard Wiles received a phone call last Friday from a local Department of Homeland Security representative asking if his deputies could work off-duty at the shelter site, a tent city about 20 miles east of El Paso at the Tornillo-Marcelino Serna port of entry. The camp was housing children who entered the country unaccompanied but expected to receive children who were forcibly separated from their families, Wiles said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Law enforcement officers often moonlight at second jobs, but Wiles has final say in approving off-duty employment for his deputies.

“I told them absolutely not. I think it’s wrong,” Wiles said of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy that resulted in the forced separations of families. “It’s not consistent with the values of the sheriff’s office.”

Wiles knew that if he agreed to allow his office to help the federal government at this site, the “El Paso community would have an understanding that we support that policy, which we don’t.”

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order reversing this policy, ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border. But the order does not resolve the situation for the more than 2,300 children who have already been housed in facilities separate from their parents. Administration officials told The Washington Post that the executive order did not stipulate that the children would be immediately reunited with their families.

Democrats and advocacy groups argue that the order is an effort by the administration to incarcerate families together indefinitely.

The El Paso County sheriff is among a growing list of law enforcement officers and elected leaders who have protested the Trump administration amid the ongoing border crisis.

Harris County, Texas, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez called separating families at the border “an affront to American values.” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo ferociously condemned the policy on Twitter, calling it “oppressive, inhumane, unGodly.” Chris Magnus, the police chief of another border city, Tucson, wrote that the practice raised “troubling questions” for police chiefs who cooperate with immigration enforcement officials. “Is this consistent with the oath you took to serve & protect?” Magnus said. “Is this humane or moral?”

But Wiles’ refusal to assist the government at a children’s shelter is a concrete example of a law enforcement leader taking a firm stand against the government. Texas Monthly called it “one of the most forceful steps yet” from law enforcement officials critical of the Trump administration’s practice.

Robert Horstman, president of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Deputies Association, told KFOX14 that the deputies stand by their sheriff’s decision.

In 2016, El Paso sheriff deputies agreed to moonlight at a shelter at Fort Bliss set up temporarily for hundreds of unaccompanied minors who had crossed the border.

“The purpose of that security was to protect those kids who had come over the border but were not with their parents,” Wiles said. But the sheriff refused to help assist an encampment for children who were forcibly taken from their parents.

“We’re talking about kids here, that did nothing more than come across the border with a parent or some adult,” Wiles said. “We wanted to make sure that we were not part of that.”