What does it mean for people who are undocumented or maybe someone who doesn’t have their wallet with them when they are stopped for whatever reason by the Houston Police (HPD)?
ICE has unloaded close to one million names of warrants, that probably only have a name attached with no address or other information that would allow HPD to detain you. What does detain mean? probably that you will be handcuffed and placed on the rear seat of the patrol car while HPD waits for ICE to show up at their location. If ICE does not show, supposedly, they will then release you. If you are Jose Garcia and live in Houston.
2700 Jose Garcias is listed in the phone book, but we all know that we don’t all have our phones listed under our names. Like many third-world countries, many of our residents use WhatsApp. Public internet access is available almost everywhere, and one can use WhatsApp to make international calls for free.
If HPD seems to think that the immigrant community is ignorant of what they are doing, they are sorely mistaken. Whitmire and his policy have made Houston much more dangerous for us. People who would normally call in crimes will not do so, especially if their freedom is at risk or the risk of being separated from their families here.
Besides, the MAGAs here in Texas have found a new bogeyman to scare the citizens with: Muslims, Sharia Law. So they are not advertising their sweeps of Mexicans as they used to. They are even acting nicely, like the family released from the valley.
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A survey of Latinos about their perceptions of police found that 70 percent of undocumented immigrants said they are “less likely” to report crimes to law enforcement if they are victimized because they fear questions about their immigration status. (Roughly 80 percent of undocumented immigrants come from Mexico and Central and South America, which are mostly Latino.)