I have known Orlando Sanchez for more than 20 years. He is a nice guy. I have nothing personal against him.
But nice is not enough.
We already have a whole cult of Trump ass-kissers in this country. Harris County does not need a county judge who is afraid to tell Donald Trump and ICE when they are wrong.
The Houston Chronicle gave Sanchez and Democrat Letitia Plummer the same question: After the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an ICE agent, what should Harris County do about ICE? Sanchez and Plummer answered on the same day. That makes this about as fair a comparison as voters are ever going to get. (Houston Chronicle)
Orlando wrote a lot of good words.
He said a badge does not erase accountability. He said immigration status does not erase a person’s humanity. He called for a trustworthy investigation, preservation of evidence, protection of witnesses, and cooperation from government agencies. Those are all reasonable things. (Houston Chronicle)
But I finished Orlando’s column asking the same question I had when I started:
What would you actually do, Orlando?
He never really tells us.
He does not tell us whether Harris County should voluntarily expand its cooperation with ICE. He does not tell us which version of the federal 287(g) program he would accept. He does not tell us whether county officers working with ICE should wear body cameras. He does not tell us whether the public should know how many people are being detained and transferred to ICE or how much county money is being spent doing it.
He gives us principles.
Plummer gives us a plan.
She says Harris County should comply with the immigration cooperation Texas law requires — and not go one inch further.
She specifically rejects the 287(g) Task Force Model that can give local officers immigration-enforcement authority during routine police work. She wants county personnel forced into immigration enforcement to wear body cameras. She wants detainers, transfers, and county spending on ICE cooperation reported publicly every quarter. She wants an immigrant legal-defense fund and victim and witness services regardless of immigration status. And she says Harris County should go to court when state mandates cross constitutional lines. (Houston Chronicle)
You may disagree with Plummer.
But you know where she stands.
That matters.
It matters even more after what happened this week at a Home Depot on Bellaire Boulevard. A Guatemalan man witnessed somebody firing a gun, called HPD, showed officers the shell casings, and helped identify the suspect.
Before HPD finished its investigation, ICE had the witness in custody.
HPD says it did not contact ICE or assist in the arrest. That denial should be taken seriously. But nobody has yet adequately explained how ICE happened to arrive at exactly the right place and time to take away the man helping Houston police solve a crime. (Houston Chronicle)
Plummer addressed exactly that danger in her Chronicle column: when immigrants become afraid of law enforcement, witnesses disappear and crimes become harder to solve.
Fear is a gift to criminals. (Houston Chronicle)
That is not some abstract liberal immigration argument. It is a public-safety argument.
If people become afraid to call the police, shooters go unidentified. Assaults go unreported. Witnesses disappear. And, as I have written before, there is another convenient result: reported crime can decline even when actual crime has not.
Plummer understands that connection.
Sanchez mostly talks around it.
Orlando also begins his column by saying, “I am an immigrant.” He is. His family fled Castro’s Cuba, and that history deserves respect. (Houston Chronicle)
But there is some history missing from that sentence.
Sanchez arrived in Houston in 1962, when his father received an offer from Roy Hofheinz to become one of the Spanish-language broadcasters for Houston’s new major-league baseball team, the Colt .45s — later the Astros. Sanchez’s own campaign biography tells that story. (Orlando Sanchez)
Cubans fleeing Castro in that era also entered an America that had made a special national policy decision to receive Cuban refugees. That was not the immigration experience faced by generations of Mexicans and Central Americans who crossed this same region looking for work, safety, or family.
Sanchez certainly has every right to call himself an immigrant.
But not every immigrant was welcomed the same way.
That distinction matters when ICE is now taking immigrants from workplaces, neighborhoods and even, apparently, from the middle of a police investigation.
I endorsed Letitia Plummer back on January 9, when she was still running against Annise Parker. One of my reasons then was immigration. I was watching what candidates were willing to say while Trump’s immigration machinery was expanding, and Plummer was willing to speak when others were much more careful. (Mbarrera)
Now she is the Democratic nominee, and voters have something better than campaign slogans with which to judge her.
We have her answer.
And we have Orlando’s.
Sanchez has spent decades in Houston and Harris County politics. He knows government. He knows how words are heard by Republicans, Democrats and Hispanic voters. His Chronicle column is carefully written so that almost everyone can find something in it they agree with.
That may be good politics.
But Harris County needs more than careful politics right now.
Donald Trump is not careful.
ICE is not careful.
And an immigrant who calls the police to report a man shooting a gun should not have to wonder whether he will be the one who ends the day behind bars.
Plummer tells us what she would do about that conflict.
Orlando tells us he wants fairness, compassion, and the rule of law.
So do I.
But those are values.
County judges have to make decisions.
On one of the biggest decisions facing Harris County, Letitia Plummer has told us where she stands.
Orlando Sanchez still has not.
That is why Letitia Plummer is the better choice for Harris County judge.