Democrat efforts to obstruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have now spread from street protests in places like Minneapolis. In Texas, several Democrat-run cities are now trying to block ICE from building new detention facilities. The latest example is the city of Hutchins in Dallas County, where the mayor announced the owner of a warehouse refused to sell the building to ICE, saying “God answered our prayers.” Days earlier, the San Antonio City Council met to discuss ways to block or interfere with a planned ICE facility there.
This targeting of planned ICE facilities is a new tactic in the left’s war on ICE, but one that raises some legal questions. “I would say the Attorney General’s Office needs to take a look at this,” says Bob Price with Breitbart Texas. “The state of Texas passed anti-sanctuary city laws a long time ago, and while this is not letting criminal aliens out on the streets per se, it is certainly interfering with immigration law enforcement, which I would think would be a crime in the state of Texas.”
In the case of Hutchins, the city may have pressured the warehouse owner into rejecting a sale to ICE. In San Antonio, council members discussed threatening to cut off city business with vendors or those who signed contracts with the facility.
Price tells KTRH these actions by local governments are possibly illegal, but also dangerous and short-sighted. “ICE is going to build these facilities,” he says. “They can either do it by purchasing warehouses that are empty or have been abandoned in these cities and counties, or they can build them themselves at much more expense and cost to the taxpayers.”