Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins called on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to stop victimizing immigrant communities.
During a call with reporters Wednesday, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins called on Gov. Greg Abbott to "stop" his obsession with targeting immigrant communities. "Rather than continue to victimize people that we are trying to help," Jenkins said, "work with local governments and our federal partners to try to fix this immigration system."
The call was organized by immigration advocates in response to Tuesday's court ruling that temporarily blocks President Obama's 2014 immigration actions. Jenkins noted that Dallas County is home to about 200,000 people who would benefit from the deportation relief President Obama extended to certain immigrants brought here as minors and parenting U.S. citizen children and legal residents.
"There's a lot at stake for our communities," he said. "This is not only a blow to those who would benefit and their families, but it's a blow to all of us and the chance to build a stronger and more cohesive community because these are our neighbors—they live among us, they go to church with us, they're next to us at the movies and the grocery store."
Dallas County Sherriff Lupe Valdez also joined the call and explained how forcing immigrants into the shadows directly compromises the safety of the community.
"No one wants to call law enforcement when they're in trouble if they think they're gonna be harmed by it," Valdez said.
Making law-abiding immigrants wary of the government and afraid of law enforcement officials, she said, makes it "difficult to separate the ones who are going to harm and the ones who are not going to harm."
President Obama made a related point to reporters Tuesday about prioritizing where law enforcement officials focused their energy.
"This is something that we necessarily have to make choices about," Obama said. "We have 11 million people here who we're not all going to deport."
For more reactions to Tuesday's ruling, please head below the fold.
Judge Jenkins said that North Texas—including Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, and Collins Counties—or what people more commonly refer to as the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is home to the second largest number of undocumented immigrants who are affected by Obama's actions outside of Los Angeles County, CA.
He noted that not allowing undocumented immigrants to fully participate in the Texas economy and pay taxes is actually "suppressing wages" for everyone in the region who makes at or around $15 an hour, regardless of their immigration status. That's because many business owners hire undocumented workers at below-market wages.
"We believe that this is not only a human rights and justice issue, but it's an economic issue as well," he said.
Households headed by undocumented immigrants, which sometimes include U.S. citizens or legal immigrants, already contribute heavily to the tax base in many states, including Texas. Here's what the
Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy found in 2010:
Collectively, these households paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes. That included $1.2 billion in personal income taxes, $1.6 billion in property taxes, and $8.4 billion in sales taxes. The states receiving the most tax revenue from households headed by unauthorized immigrants were California ($2.7 billion), Texas ($1.6 billion), Florida ($806.8 million), New York ($662.4 million), and Illinois ($499.2 million).
Immigration advocates on the call emphasized that they would continue to push forward with preparing people to register for the expanded Dreamer program (DACA), and the program for parents of legal residents and citizen children (DAPA), continually referring to the ruling delaying the programs as nothing more than a "speed bump."
Though Cristina Jimenez of United We Dream acknowledged that people were frustrated, she said there was no corresponding lack of determination.
"The reality is, people like my parents, who qualify for DAPA, are eager to apply. They have been talking about it since November," Jimenez said, referring to the month in 2014 when President Obama first announced the program for undocumented parents. "Dreamers in our community fought really hard to win this victory, and we will fight to protect it."
Though Obama administration officials have already promised to appeal the ruling, immigration advocates are calling on the Department of Justice to also seek an immediate stay of Judge Andrew Hanen's injunction so that the programs can move forward as soon as possible.
The political backlash against Republicans by the Latino community is also growing ever more apparent. Jorge Ramos, an influential journalist in the Latino community and an anchor at Univision, wrote Wednesday that Republicans "seem not to have learned anything from their electoral defeat in 2012."
They are now setting themselves up to lose the 2016 presidential election – it’s not possible to win the White House without the Latino vote.”