House Gives Initial Blessing to 'Sanctuary Cities' Bill that Threatens to Jail Sheriffs
House Speaker Joe Straus recently said “a sanctuary city bill of some sort will pass” this session, though it wasn’t immediately clear how different the legislation would be from the version of the bill that sailed through the ultra-conservative Senate in early February.
Now we have a better idea. On Wednesday, a House committee passed a version of Senate Bill 4, the so-called sanctuary cities legislation, that is almost as harsh as the Senate version. The bill cleared the committee on a 7-5 party-line vote, and opponents are still deriding the measure as anti-immigrant. Under the punitive legislation, local law enforcement would face civil and criminal penalties for declining to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
State Representative Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, said despite the changes, “SB 4 is still a heavy-handed solution to an imaginary problem.”
The House proposal, authored by state Representative Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, preserves some of the most controversial components of the Senate version. It would still bar local law enforcement entities, including university police departments, from adopting policies that prohibit officers from enforcing immigration law.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/house-committee-advances-new-version-of-anti-sanctuary-cities/