Boosts Operation Lone Star Numbers but Doesn’t Protect Communities
Contact:
Immigrant Legal Resource Center: Donna De La Cruz, ddelacruz@ilrc.org
Detention Watch Network: Jenny Garcia, media@detentionwatchnetwork.org
HOUSTON, TX – Texas authorities have expansively interpreted a 2024 law that imposes a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence on people convicted under the state's smuggling law to include giving rides to undocumented people, The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), Human Rights Watch (HRW), Detention Watch Network (DWN), and AJA Advocacy Solutions said in a new report highlighting the law’s harm.
The brief states that most people prosecuted for smuggling in Texas are young US citizens. Texas law enforcement officers have a troubled track record with identifying alleged smugglers, and now the state has raised the stakes of each arrest significantly.
The research brief comes on the heels of a scathing court ruling condemning Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against migrant shelters like Annunciation House, wherein Paxton mischaracterized the charity’s provision of shelter and services to migrants as “human smuggling.”
“The goal of this law is very simple: punish anyone with the audacity to help undocumented people, whether it is the non-profit providing services and shelter to migrants or the good Samaritan driving their elderly neighbor to the doctor’s office,” said Priscilla Olivarez, Senior Policy Attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “The new law may inflate Texas Department of Public Safety’s arrest numbers, but it gets law enforcement no closer to apprehending the cartel members at the top of these schemes who profit off migrants’ desperation and vulnerability. This law does nothing more than frighten Texas families, send young Americans to prison for lengthy sentences, and deter individuals from helping vulnerable people in their time of greatest need.”
"Imprisoning young Texans for at least 10 years for the non-violent offense of driving someone down the highway is shocking and does nothing to serve the public interest," said Bob Libal, a Texas-based consultant to Human Rights Watch. "This policy threatens to fill Texas' prisons with young people while doing nothing to create an orderly, rights-based migration system that serves border communities and all Texans."
“Without a doubt, this policy increases racial profiling and further fuels our country’s gross obsession with mass incarceration,” said Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director at Detention Watch Network. “Texas has become a shameful laboratory of racist and exclusionary policies that are then replicated across the country - greatly harming people based on what they look like and the language they speak while jeopardizing our collective safety.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving immigration law and policy and advancing immigrant rights.
Human Rights Watch’s immigration and border rights work uses a racial justice lens to protect basic rights, ensure families and communities thrive, and protect people from harm.