Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs an anti-BDS law at the Austin Jewish Community Center.
It allows law enforcement to ask any detained person about their immigration status, for any reason. "I'm getting my signing pen warmed up", he posted on Twitter.
Texas has an estimated 1.5 million undocumented immigrants and the longest border with Mexico of any U.S. state.
"Banning sanctuary cities is about stopping officials who have sworn to enforce the law from helping people who commit bad crimes evade immigration detainers", said state Sen.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the bill "will ensure that no liberal local official can flaunt the law".
Last year, 500,000 hail claims were filed in the Lone Star State, resulting in more than $4 billion of insured losses, according to the Insurance Council of Texas.
President Donald Trump signed a similar executive order on sanctuary cities last week. Local jurisdictions could face fines reaching $25,000 per day. IN lawmakers passed a measure that bans colleges and universities from officially pledging not to cooperate with immigration officials.
The Texas House of Representatives took up a bill Wednesday that could present some major changes for public high schools. Community safety also is at risk when police are forced to become immigration agents, as Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has warned.
United States space plane completes two-year secret mission
Some Brevard County residents might have heard the booms before the space plane landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility. The experimental space plane named X-37B completed a classified mission of two years, the US Air Force said.
The number of Latinos reporting rape in Houston is down 42.8 percent from past year, Garcia said, and reports of other violent crimes has dropped 13 percent, due to fear of deportation.
A third bill, approved on Wednesday, would repeal all previous convention applications that Texas has adopted.
"It has frankly gone from a bad bill, to a really, really, really, bad awful bill", said Democratic Senator Sylvia Garcia. It would also prohibit local governments from adopting or enforcing local bathroom regulations. It resisted passing laws opposing bilingual education or illegal immigration even as such statutes materialized in Arizona, Massachusetts and California.
Civil liberties advocates and immigrant groups say this pre-emption of municipal authority essentially gives carte blanche to officers to harass immigrants and dark-skinned Americans.
Now, the controversial Senate Bill Four, nicknamed the "show me your papers" law, heads to the governor's office for approval. "Why are these guys against protecting the citizens that they were hired for?" This is not the first time for the so-called "sanctuary cities" bill to emerge. Colorado killed a bill Wednesday that, like Texas' measure, would have withheld state funding from cities that protect undocumented immigrants. "Nowhere in the bill does it allow an officer to enforce federal immigration law".
"SB 4 is a bill to say "do what the law is today" and we've made it look like a demon that it's not", said Perry, R-Lubbock.
"It's gone from a bad bill to a really, really bad, awful bill that will result in police officers investigating the immigration status of a person, including children, without probable cause", said Garcia, the Houston Democrat. "The Legislature could easily start by addressing the businesses that hire undocumented workers, which is why the majority of the honest, hard-working persons immigrate to this country with or without documentation".
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