Houston Police chief blasts Texas sanctuary city law at national immigration conference Gathering marks today's deadline for 'Dreamers' on DACA program

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo talks at the National Immigration Forum conference in Washington, D.C., Oct. 5, 2017. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo talks at the National Immigration Forum conference in Washington, D.C., Oct. 5, 2017. Photo: Kevin Diaz, National Immigration Forum Photo: Kevin Diaz, National Immigration Forum Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Houston Police chief blasts Texas sanctuary city law at national immigration conference 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON – Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, speaking Thursday at a national immigration forum, blasted Texas' new anti-sanctuary cities law, known as "SB4," that requires police officers to question the immigration status of people they detain.

"It is so counter-intuitive, counterproductive," Acevedo said in remarks that recalled Sunday's mass shooting in Las Vegas that took the lives of at least 58 people as well as the gunman.

"When you have millions victims and witnesses of crime that you're pushing back into the shadows, people who might know about a guy who's going crazy and might shoot up 20,000 concertgoers, and they're afraid to come forward," he said. "How is that a public safety measure? It's a real problem."

Acevedo delivered his remarks at conference of the National Immigration Forum, a group that has sought to rally moderates and conservatives to a "center-right" consensus on immigration reform.

The conference also marked Thursday's deadline for so-called Dreamers to reapply for legal status under former President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which President Donald Trump is phasing out.

As lawmakers in Congress look for a way to continue legal protections for young immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children, Acevedo called for compromise.

While some immigration activists have held out for a path to full citizenship for Dreamers or their family members, Acevedo called for a compromise on legal status.

"What they want is legitimacy," he said. "Their kids will be able to vote all they want. So it's got to be a give and take. It can't be all or nothing."

Acevedo, an outspoken critic of SB4, a law aimed at so-called sanctuary cities, said Houston continues to work with its federal partners in combating gang violence and crime, including requests by federal authorities to hold suspected immigration violators 48 hours past their legal release times.

Last month a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled in a legal challenge to the 2017 law that parts of the sanctuary cities ban can go into effect, overruling a lower court ruling that had blocked it.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said the state can enforce a section of the law that says police executives cannot stop their employees from assisting federal immigration agents.

The judges also said the state can make jails comply with immigration "detainers" – requests from federal officials to hold people in their custody for immigration authorities.

In an interview, Acevedo said his department has received only five detainer requests so far this year from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

Meanwhile, he said, while SB4 prevents law enforcement executives from telling officers they can't ask criminal suspects about immigration status, the law still affords protections to victims or witness to crime.

Despite the restrictions of SB4, which critics have dubbed the "show me your papers" law, Acevedo said he is keeping the department squarely focused on law enforcement.

"Trust me when I say I will manage my own work force," he said. "The Legislature is not going to decide the priorities of the people of Houston, or of the Houston Police Department. Our priorities will be based on what our local community wants. And what they want is, we have 20,000 documented gang members. They want to make sure we keep those people in gangs in check."

"We had 302 homicides last year," Acevedo continued. "They want us to do everything we can do reduce that number and save lives. What they want is when they call 911 because someone is breaking in and they're hiding in their closet, we get there in a matter of a minute or two, not 10 ,15, or 20 minutes because an under-resourced, under-staffed police department is busy booking a day laborer at Home Depot. That's not the priority of the people we serve."

He said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, "appropriately, wants us to focus on crime, not be ICE agents."

Ultimately, he said, police officers are in the front lines of the immigration debate.

"We're the ones who get stuck," he said. "Everybody wants to talk about community policing, yet nobody wants to do the things that are really important to true policing, and that's immigration reform... There are so many people who live in the shadows, who are afraid to come forward."

Because of Congress failure to act, he said, the states are stepping with a "hodge-podge" of ill-advised laws like SB4: "If we don't do something on the national level, there will be more and more bad laws passed at the state level, and that's not in the best interests of anybody."

While backers of SB4, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed in May, say it is meant to uphold the law, Acevedo said it undermines law enforcement.

"What we don't want to get involved in is immigration enforcement because our No. 1 force multiplier in law enforcement really is the community," he said. "We cannot have a significant segment of society afraid to come forward and stand up for their neighbor or themselves because they're afraid they'll be deported."