The Title above, Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?” is from a Dirty Harry movie. In Austin, Texas, if you have been here illegally and you happen to call the police for help or something else, you are the punk that gets shot in the movie, if the police officer that arrives believes, like Elon Musk, that there is too much empathy, or he may just be an illegal hater.
If you witness a crime, do you feel lucky? In Austin, you are rolling the dice. Here in Houston, there is no discretion. If they run your name and they notice that your name is on an administrative warrant list, you will be handed over to ICE, so prepare to say goodbye to your family. Actually, you probably won’t get that courtesy, as ICE will move you far away to prevent anyone from finding you. The next call you may make, if you survive the torture and do not die while in their custody, may be from where they send you. If you are lucky enough to be in your home country, not in a foreign country that you know nothing about.
Austin police have issued new guidance to clarify how officers communicate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, a move prompted by growing scrutiny of the department’s role in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after a woman and her daughter were deported following a 911 call for help.
The guidance, first issued by Austin police leadership Friday night, follows revelations last week that Austin officers on Jan. 5 alerted ICE after encountering an “administrative warrant” in a federal database they routinely use to check for criminal warrants or other records. That encounter resulted in the deportation earlier this week of 26-year-old Karen Gutierrez-Castellanos, a Honduran national, and her daughter, a 5-year-old U.S. citizen, her family confirmed.
Austin police policy previously gave officers discretion about whether to alert ICE upon discovery of an administrative warrant, which federal authorities use to arrest a person believed to have violated immigration law. Davis said she intends to instruct officers to use their judgement to gauge whether an individual presents a public risk. Under the new guidance, officers will still have discretion over whether to notify ICE, but will need special permission from supervisors to wait an extended period for the federal agents to complete an arrest.
Houston, a woman calls HPD and is deported:
Houston police called federal immigration agents on a woman who dialed 911 to report domestic abuse by her ex-husband in April, newly released records show.
The woman, an immigrant from El Salvador who has lived in Houston for seven years, had a removal order stemming from the denial of her asylum claim. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents declined to pick her up because they said there was no one to take custody of her children, according to a copy of the police report obtained by the Houston Chronicle through a public records request.
The woman hasn’t yet been taken into federal custody, but victims’ advocates said the incident is a worst-case scenario for those worried about the worsening state of domestic violence in the region and the likelihood that women will avoid reporting problems to law enforcement.
“Anecdotally, we know there’s a huge fear in the immigrant community about reporting any type of incident to law enforcement because of the fear of being deported,” said Amy Smith, deputy director at the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Council.
An HPD spokesperson defended the officer’s actions, saying he was simply following protocol.
“An officer responding to an assault call conducted a routine criminal history check on the reportee and discovered she had an active ICE warrant,” the department spokesperson said. “As with any law enforcement warrant, the officer is required to notify the appropriate agency. The officer continued to assist the reportee professionally, providing her with victim support resources and maintaining a high level of service.”