For years, our Hispanic Sheriff, Ed Gonzalez, has been working with ICE, allowing them to enter the jail and go through the records. I wrote not too long ago that our elected officials were working with ICE.

Harris County used to have such a deal in place with ICE, known as a 287(g) agreement. But Gonzalez canceled it in 2017, arguing the $675,000 in salaries his agency was paying 10 deputies to look for immigrants in jails could be better spent if they were patrolling the streets. 

Instead, Gonzalez said he struck a different agreement with ICE allowing federal officers into Harris County jails while his deputies were redeployed. Under the agreement, ICE has placed detention holds on 3,600 Harris County inmates a year and taken custody of about 10 inmates a day, Gonzalez wrote in a letter last month to state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who coauthored the bill. 

Gonzalez wrote that as of April, ICE had placed holds on 1,620 inmates and was picking up an average of 16 people a day. 

“All of this is accomplished at no cost to Harris County taxpayers,” Gonzalez wrote in a letter sent April 4, several days after the Senate initially passed the bill. 

Source

Federal Data Shows Houston Leads Nation in ICE Arrests

Houston recorded more immigration arrests than any other U.S. city this year.

Houston leads the nation in immigration arrests, topping every other major U.S. city both for ICE arrests made in the community and for detentions carried out inside jails and prisons, according to newly released federal data.

From Jan. 20 through Oct. 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported roughly 5,200 “at-large” arrests in the Houston area—individuals taken into custody outside of jail settings—based on data compiled by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the New York Times.

Over the same period, Houston also recorded the highest number of ICE arrests at jails and prisons nationwide, with approximately 9,300 detentions. Those figures place Houston ahead of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Source

Off Topic

Over time, traffic to my website has been increasing. The total of 819 visitors is unique. For instance, if I am included, I would be counted only once per month or for the entire year.