Paxton targets San Antonio under SB 4
AG’s suit accuses police of breaking state law against ‘sanctuary cities’ by releasing migrants
AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the state’s first sanctuary cities lawsuit Friday, accusing San Antonio police of hindering federal immigration enforcement by releasing a dozen people suspected of being in the country illegally after finding them in a tractor-trailer last December.
Paxton said a state investigation found police Chief William McManus “skirted” protocol by ignoring the Department of Homeland Security’s requests to investigate the matter. McManus took custody of the passengers in the tractor-trailer and connected them with immigration attorneys and advocates who provided them with legal advice and a translator. They were interviewed by detectives and then released, according to a police report.
Paxton seeks more than $11.6 million in fines and is requesting a court order to stop the city from enforcing policies “thwarting” federal immigration enforcement officials.
“Chief McManus called a private entity to take the aliens away from Homeland Security and their status remains unknown,” Paxton said in a video statement Friday. “No city in Texas should put the safety of police officers and the public at risk by defying state law.”
The lawsuit is the first under Senate Bill 4, a hotly contested state law targeting so-called sanctuary cities viewed as being soft on illegal immigration. It draws more scrutiny to a series of judgment calls that McManus made after officers found the truck. Police union officials were outraged by the chief ’s decisions on the case and have called for disciplinary action against him. But city officials say they are confident neither the city nor the police chief did anything illegal.
McManus, reached by phone Friday, referred all questions to San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia, who said in a written statement that neither the city nor McManus violated SB 4.
“The attorney general’s characterizations of what happened that day are clearly aimed at furthering a political agenda,” he said. “The city has a long history of cooperating with federal authorities and we will continue to do so.”
‘Stepped in doo-doo’
McManus, who oversees more than 2,000 sworn officers, defended his decision in the days after the incident. He said his call to pursue the investigation under a state human-smuggling statute was “situational.” His officers did not have authority to enforce immigration laws, he said.
On the afternoon of Dec. 23, 2017, a passing motorist flagged down police after watching people unload from the 18-wheeler truck and climb into waiting vehicles, according to McManus and the lawsuit. Twelve people who were picked up from Laredo, including a 16-year-old, remained when police arrived at the scene.
The driver of the truck, Herbert Alan Nichols, 58, of Houston, was arrested that day and initially charged with smuggling of persons, but he was released from jail three months later because no criminal charges had been filed against him.
“We were not able to indict within the 90-day period because we didn’t have the evidence,” Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood said Friday. “Because of the way the investigation was handled, we have issues with being able to gather what we need.”
While prosecutors have spoken on the phone to some of the immigrants, who were being represented by the immigrant advocacy group RAICES, LaHood said his office has been unable to establish who they are or where they’re from because prosecutors need to talk to them in person.
“RAICES has not cooperated in that fashion,” LaHood said. “If we’re going to go forward with a case, we need evidence. If we don’t have the people that were transported in front of us ... we can’t present it to a grand jury and can’t also take it to a (trial) jury.”
In the past, the director of RAICES has said that his clients were interested in testifying but that his efforts to arrange a meeting with prosecutors were ignored. The 12 are now spread out across Texas and the rest of the country, he told the San Antonio Express-News.
Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement complained that McManus erred by not letting them handle the investigation of Nichols, while McManus said ICE agents were on the scene and could have taken into custody the truck driver or any of the people who rode in back.
Mike Helle, the president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association and a critic of McManus, called for the chief to be placed on administrative leave immediately.
“We got a black eye because our boss stepped in doo-doo,” Helle said. “Given the severity of this, given that you had to have the Texas attorney general get involved, now the whole entire U.S. is watching.”
The city, its police department, McManus and City Manager Sheryl Sculley, who are named in the lawsuit, “maintain policies” that limit enforcement of immigration laws and prohibit officers from referring people suspected of being in the country illegally to federal immigration officials, according to the 25-page lawsuit filed in Travis County. Those policies include an ordinance allowing the city to spend $200,000 on services to help immigrants and people suspected of being in the country illegally navigate federal immigration laws and other issues, according to the suit.
‘Flawed understanding’
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the sanctuary cities bill into law in 2017, fresh off President Donald Trump’s election that promised a hard-line approach to illegal immigration and a push to build a border wall. Commonly known as SB 4, the law requires local law enforcement to adhere to requests from federal immigration officials to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally. SB 4 also prevents law enforcement agencies from forbidding officers from asking people about their immigration status during routine stops.
Opponents argue SB 4 is politically motivated and undermines trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities. The law has attracted staunch critics within law enforcement, including Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who argues the law pushes victims and witnesses of crime “back into the shadows.”
San Antonio quickly challenged the law in court. A threejudge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld almost all the law. The court struck down a provision imposing civil penalties on local officials who “endorse” policies that limit immigration enforcement, ruling it would violate the First Amendment.
SB 4 and the lawsuit against the city are meant to demonize, frighten and intimidate immigrants in Texas while pressuring local governments to violate their constitutional rights, according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, commonly known as MALDEF.
“Of course, this trifecta of misconstruing the law, ignoring the Constitution, and targeting the vulnerable is nothing new for Paxton, but seems to characterize his entire flawed understanding of the rule of law in the United States,” Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, said in an emailed statement.