Amid political clashes over the role of police in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Dallas Police Department has resisted attempts to be pulled into extremes.
We wish Gov. Greg Abbott would show the same restraint.
The governor sent a letter to the city of Dallas threatening to pull $32 million in funding over language in the Dallas Police Department’s general orders that prohibits cops from detaining people solely for immigration reasons. Abbott has failed to credit DPD for efforts to strike a balance between cooperation with the feds in criminal investigations and the reality that local officers cannot themselves enforce federal immigration laws.
Earlier this year, police Chief Daniel Comeaux, a former agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, declined a request by the Community Police Oversight Board to detail his officers’ interactions with immigration officers. Dallas police often work alongside federal officials on gang arrests and other criminal investigations, and for months, DPD has faced unfounded suspicion and pressure from activists who want cops to renounce all cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mayor Eric Johnson forced the council last year to consider a partnership with ICE that would have deputized police officers for immigration enforcement even after Comeaux had already rejected it. The chief said the program would have pulled officers away from answering 911 calls — this in a city that struggles with response times — and the council ultimately sided with him.
It seems to us that Dallas police understand that cooperation with federal immigration authorities is necessary and that, at the same time, cops don’t have the bandwidth or authority to be immigration officers.
If Dallas police arrest a person on suspicion of a crime, the person is booked at the Dallas County jail, where county officials can and do hold inmates for ICE. But if police have no crime for which to arrest someone, DPD’s general orders state that cops can’t prolong the stop just to investigate the person’s immigration status or to hold the person for immigration authorities. However, officers can volunteer information about the person to ICE.
This is less a political posture than a legal one. Multiple law enforcement associations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, have raised concerns that a decision by a police officer to hold someone solely for an immigration warrant — a civil matter the cop can’t enforce — will expose cities to lawsuits. These are lawsuits that we, the taxpayers, will be on the hook for.
After Abbott’s threat, Comeaux, diplomatic as ever, said the department was reviewing its policies. But Sgt. Sean Pease, president of the Dallas Police Association, called Abbott’s move “deeply disturbing.”
DPD has tried to do the right thing here, recognizing that, Trump’s excesses aside, there remain valid grounds for cooperation with ICE to capture gangsters, traffickers and other criminals. So how is it that Abbott is threatening to defund a police department led by a former federal special agent who wants to bring down his department’s response times while standing up for cooperation with the feds at a time when it is deeply unpopular?
Dallas police are not the enemy, governor.
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