Safety zones

‘Sensitive locations’ policy restricting ICE arrests should become federal law

The story sounds like a plot for a Lifetime TV movie, one of those family melodramas inspired by true events.

A mother and father take their baby to a hospital, where doctors diagnose their son with an illness that can only be cured by a pediatric surgery team in another city. But the parents face a terrible dilemma: They’re undocumented, and in order to save their child, they must ride an ambulance through a Border Patrol checkpoint where they might be arrested.

As the desperate parents debate their decision, someone at the hospital notifies the Border Patrol. An agent walks into the emergency room and offers the mother and father a choice: They can take their child past the checkpoint to the other hospital, but afterward they’ll be arrested and face deportation proceedings.

If this were a TV movie, it might be titled “Saving Isaac: The Oscar and Irma Sanchez Story.” Sadly enough, it’s a true story, a tale the Sanchez family recently recounted to NPR News. And it’s just one of many incidents in which Border Patrol agents have taken action in what have long been protected as “sensitive locations.”

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy issued in 2011 severely limits arrests in places like hospitals, schools, churches and funeral sites. But immigrant advocates believe the protections afforded in what ought to be safe zones are going by the wayside. They point to a number of incidents like the Sanchez family encountered. A father who dropped off his 12-year-old daughter at school was arrested by ICE agents in Los Angeles, a half-dozen homeless men were taken into custody by ICE agents as they left a hypothermia shelter in Virginia, and a woman in El Paso was apprehended when she went to a courthouse seeking a domestic violence restraining order.

Arrests in places like these aren’t just inhumane, they’re short-sighted and they make our communities less safe. Lawyers working with immigrants report that undocumented parents are afraid to take their children — many of whom are U.S. citizens — to school or to seek medical care. Other attorneys say victims and witnesses who are in this country illegally are afraid of showing up to testify in criminal trials. Our own police chief here in Houston, Art Acevedo, cites statistics backing up his assertion that frightened Hispanics are reporting fewer crimes.

So a number of members of Congress are backing a piece of legislation called the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which would turn ICE’s current policy into a law. It would also expand the list of protected places, adding locations like public assistance offices and bus stops frequented by children. Most importantly, it would restrict ICE agents from staging enforcement actions at local, state and federal courthouses.

The Sanchez family is fine. Isaac survived surgery performed at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi. Border Patrol agents reportedly never left his parents’ side during the operation. They later took the mother and father to a station for booking and fingerprinting. The family was allowed to return home in Brownsville, a sensible and humane outcome to what could have been a tragic story.

But incidents like this at places like hospitals should never have happened at all. Our elected representatives need to put a stop to this. Congress should pass that legislation restricting immigration arrests at so-called “sensitive locations.”

Lawyers working with immigrants report that undocumented parents are afraid to take their children — many of whom are U.S. citizens — to school or to seek medical care.