The Texas DPS is sharing lists of traffic citations with federal immigration authorities

Photo: San Antonio Police Department/Facebook The little-known “DPS citation lists” recently came to light in...

For the past two years, the Texas Department of Public Safety has shared with immigration officers the names of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of motorists its officers ticketed around the state to make it easier for federal authorities to deport those they suspect of being in the country illegally.

The little-known “DPS citation lists” recently came to light in San Antonio in a federal immigration case that highlighted a controversial stop by a state trooper, who, according to a judge, was “unprofessional” toward a motorist he suspected of being here illegally by chastising him when he spoke Spanish and shoving him roughly against a truck after the man didn’t appear to understand a command.

The lists are important to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the agency carries out President Donald Trump’s orders to deport more undocumented immigrants. Critics argue the arrangement may allow police to racially profile motorists or to make pretextual stops.

But some advocates defend such a practice, arguing that it’s just another tool for helping ICE concentrate on undocumented immigrants who have crimes in their backgrounds and may be a threat to public safety.

Translator To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below. US News

SURGE: New ‘zero tolerance’ policy overwhelms South Texas courts

“What they (DPS officers) do is they generate a list and they forward it to us to investigate all the names that are there,” ICE agent Omar Esquivel testified at a court hearing in San Antonio recently. “What we do, we want records checks on every name that’s (on) there.”

The number of people on the list depends “on how many citations they issue,” Esquivel said, but each of the 12 agents with his ICE unit in San Antonio gets a piece of the list. Each portion can contain 20 to 100 names, Esquivel said.

According to DPS spokesman Tom Vinger, the arrangement is not just in the San Antonio area, but statewide. The agency’s citation lists contain the names of people ticketed only for certain violations, without regard to a person’s origin, he said.

“There is a standing request from ICE to provide them a statewide listing of DPS enforcement of DWI and no driver license offenses,” Vinger said in an email to the Express-News. “These lists have been provided by Highway Patrol since August 2016 on a monthly basis. The information does not include, nor do we have, immigration status on the violators. The names of individuals involved in these enforcement actions are included in the list, regardless of race/ethnicity/sex, etc.”

ICE gave no details beyond what Esquivel divulged in court, so it’s undisclosed how many people have been deported as a result of the arrangement.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) works in close partnership with other federal agencies, as well as state and local law enforcement,” the agency said in a statement. “By sharing resources and working jointly in a collaborative effort, we enforce immigration law and enhance public safety in our communities by removing criminal aliens from the streets.”

Critics say the arrangement appears to have bolstered an argument that DPS is part of the Trump administration’s “deportation machine.” The agency’s officers already have been identified by their own dashcam videos posted on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union turning over to the Border Patrol motorists suspected of being in the country illegally.

Several months after the ticket list arrangement began, Texas officials passed a controversial law known as SB 4 that, among other things, allows local and state police officers to ask about immigration status, if they choose to, but only during a lawful stop or arrest. Texas’ largest cities, including San Antonio, challenged the law. After an initial victory in federal court in San Antonio that blocked implementation of most of SB 4’s provisions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the order and allowed it to take effect. It is under appeal.

“This is consistent with the deportation machine that Donald Trump has set up to deport people like young Dreamers who may get a traffic ticket or who may have a tattoo on their body and therefore suspected of gang membership,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who led a mass protest recently over the Trump administration’s recent policy of separating undocumented immigrant parents from children. “I think this is just going to create a dragnet effect in the same way that SB 4 has led to more traffic stops and profiling of people, particularly in the border areas.”

Adriana Piñon, policy counsel and senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas, said it’s concerning to have local law officers enforce immigration law because they are trained to enforce a different aspect — state criminal law.

“This lack of training then raises the question of when they are on the street, how do they know when and whether to stop a person?” Piñon said. “The big concern for us is racial profiling.”

She added that having local law officers enforce immigration erodes trust within the community, making people reticent to step forward and report crimes for fear they or their relatives may be targeted for deportation.

Piñon also said speaking Spanish is not a basis for determining someone is here illegally, whether it’s done during the stop or afterward when DPS sends the names of certain people to ticket lists provided to ICE.

“The fact that Spanish alone is a basis for (referral to ICE) flies in the face of basic Constitutional protections that each individual has,” Piñon said. “Spanish is very much a fabric of Texas. ...Racial profiling would be one of the concerns we have of how a person gets referred to a list like this.”

GRADUATES: Immigrant HISD students overcome obstacles — and Harvey — for diplomas

But Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank, said the DPS arrangement with ICE “doesn’t strike me as inappropriate in any way.”

“We want law enforcement agencies working together on behalf of public safety,” Vaughan said. “There are about 2 million criminal aliens in the country. That’s a very big workload for ICE. They don’t have time look for everyone.”

She said ICE focuses its efforts on undocumented immigrants who are priorities, such as those who have been previously convicted of a crime, and those who unlawfully re-entered the country, for example.

“The idea that ICE is just using this to pick up every illegal alien who gets a traffic ticket is preposterous,” Vaughan said. “They’re simply using legitimate encounters with state troopers to find people on their priority target list.”

She added: “I don’t think state troopers have time to write tickets to people just because they might be of interest to ICE.”

The DPS lists came to light in the case of Gaspar Rodriguez Garcia, who lives in San Antonio and is in jail, fighting charges of illegal re-entry. According to his court file, he was convicted in 2009 of illegal re-entry, sentenced to about a year jail time served and was deported in July 2010. But because he allegedly returned, that led to the latest illegal re-entry charge.

Court records show that federal charge didn’t come until after Rodriguez was pulled over on Aug. 23, 2017, by state trooper Randy Vick, reportedly because Rodriguez didn’t come to a complete stop at an intersection along Highway 46 in New Braunfels.

Now Playing:

Video from Vick’s dashcam shows Rodriguez pulled his truck over right away, spoke mostly Spanish but appeared to be compliant, though Vick seemed bothered that Rodriguez spoke to him in his native tongue. After seeing that Rodriguez did not have a driver’s license but a Mexican consular ID, Vick decided to issue two tickets - for failure to fully stop at a stop sign and driving without a license. The video also shows Vick telling the motorist to pay his tickets or “la migra” or “immigra” will come get him.

At one point, Rodriguez asks if Vick speaks Spanish because Rodriguez has trouble understanding him.

“No, I don’t speak Spanish,” Vick replies firmly. “We’re in Texas. This is the United States of America. We speak English here in America. I don’t have to speak Spanish to you. No, I don’t. And I know you speak English.”

The video shows Vick instructs Rodriguez to put his hands on the back of his pickup truck and taps on the tailgate. The video shows Rodriguez turn to lean his back on the tailgate, and Vick suddenly grabs Rodriguez by the left arm and shoves him against the pickup.

Rodriguez tells him in Spanish that he doesn’t completely understand the officer, but Vick replies that Rodriguez is “playing games.”

In examining the video of the stop recently, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, said it wasn’t completely clear from the video to support Gaspar Rodriguez’s claim that he followed Texas traffic laws.

“From the video, it appears that the black truck Gaspar Rodriguez was driving may have completely stopped a few feet behind the stop sign before making the left turn, but it is difficult to determine because of a left-turning truck in between the officer’s vehicle and the black truck,” the judge wrote in a ruling in April.

Despite that observation, the judge found that the stop of Gaspar Rodriguez’s truck “was not unreasonable, and no Fourth Amendment violation occurred, although...Trooper Vick’s conduct was unprofessional.”

“His tone of voice, body language and use of unnecessary force deserves rebuke,” Judge Rodriguez, no relation to the motorist, wrote in the ruling, which narrowly rejected Gaspar Rodriguez’s claim that any evidence gathered from the stop should be suppressed.

During the suppression hearing in April, the judge was troubled with Vick’s behavior: “I mean, based upon the trooper’s verbal statements, the physical treatment he extended to, who at that point was just a citizen for all he knew, or an individual, you know, who is supposed to be afforded some respect when a police officer stops him, I mean, why shouldn’t I just find that he was all acting pretextual to begin with? He started all of this off with the understanding that he was going to be getting this guy because he suspected him to be illegal from the get-go.”

Gaspar Rodriguez, meanwhile, pleaded no contest to the violations and paid the tickets.

But his name wound up on one of the DPS citation lists. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Molly Roth, argued that her client’s name shouldn’t have been on it.

“They (ICE) had no information at all of his presence in the United States or of any illegal activity,” Roth told the judge at the hearing. “The only reason ICE is involved is because Trooper Vick stopped him, and he shouldn’t have stopped him because Mr. Rodriguez stopped at the stop sign.”

LAWSUIT: Why a Houston lawmaker is helping sue the U.S. census as a plaintiff

Even the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Lathrop, cringed when he saw the DPS dashcam video of the stop.

“It’s worse than I thought,” Lathrop told the judge.

“It’s offensive,” the judge said.

“I agree. I agree,” Lathrop replied.

Lathrop argued that, while he didn’t condone the officer’s conduct, Gaspar Rodriguez should have fought the tickets in state court, and sought to suppress them there. But Lathrop argued that a motorist can’t withhold their identifying information, even if they believe their stop was unjustified.

“My argument is that he doesn’t have a right to privacy in his state records,” Lathrop told the judge. “The fact that (Gaspar Rodriguez) received unfair treatment from the state a few months before shouldn’t shield him from prosecution down the line.”

Two and a half months after the traffic stop, ICE agents used the information in one of the citation lists to track down and arrest Gaspar Rodriguez on Nov. 2 at his San Antonio apartment.

Vick was never summoned to testify.

Gaspar Rodriguez, meanwhile, awaits trial later this summer. His lawyer, Roth, told the judge last week that she plans to file a motion to reconsider his ruling denying the motion to suppress evidence.

Guillermo Contreras is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | gcontreras@express-news.net | @gmaninfedland