Crackdown on migrants clogs up Texas justice system
BRACKETTVILLE, Texas — Deriding the Biden administration’s border policy as a fruitless “catch and release” strategy as illegal crossings soared, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed this summer to “start arresting everybody.”
The federal government is in charge of immigration enforcement. But the state, said Abbott, a Republican, could lock migrants up for trespassing. Now, the crackdown has overwhelmed the criminal justice system at Texas’s southern border.
Critics see a move to please the governor’s conservative base that has created a whole new crisis without solving the first one. Hundreds of migrants have been detained in repurposed state prisons without formal charges, many in limbo for so long that they legally must be released. Prosecutors are backlogged with unprecedented caseloads as more arrests roll in each day. Alarmed defense attorneys accuse the state of creating a “separate and unequal” legal system for undocumented immigrants deprived of due process.
“Essentially people are disappearing in the system without case numbers, without documentation that’s publicly accessible,” said Kathryn Dyer, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law’s criminal defense clinic. She said that she worries about the migrants’ access to legal counsel and that her clients found aid through the efforts of family. “It’s just really scary,” she said.
Authorities know they cannot keep up with all of the arrests, Dyer said, “but they think that they can get away with it.”
A state district judge Tuesday approved the release of about 250 migrants on no-cost bail after lawyers with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid argued that authorities blew past their deadline to prepare a case — leaving them without formal charges for over a month. But more than 900 remain imprisoned, state officials said Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for Abbott, Renae Eze, said that migrants arrested under Operation Lone Star are “turned over to ICE for processing” when discharged. But it is not clear how many people Immigration and Customs Enforcement might choose to take into custody, and the agency did not immediately clarify. Defense lawyers said many of the migrants have detainers, meaning ICE has asked that they be held temporarily while the agency decides what to do.
“While the Biden Administration refuses to do their job and ignores the pleas of border communities for help, Governor Abbott continues working with state and local partners to provide critical personnel and resources to secure the border and protect Texans,” Eze said in a statement.
Leaders from both parties have raised alarms about a humanitarian crisis at Texas’s border with Mexico but disagree sharply on how to respond. The Biden administration faced particular backlash last week over border agents’ treatment of Haitians who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, with Democrats denouncing the tactics and deportations as inhumane while Republicans called for stricter enforcement to keep people away.
Abbott announced the broad Operation Lone Star border initiative in March as an effort to “deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas.”