Austin American-Statesman: ICE deten­tions of asylum-seekers not mak­ing Aus­tin safer

A sister lost her brother. A nephew can’t rely on his uncle to take him to day­care. A gradu­at­ing class misses a loqua­cious friend, its excite­ment for the mile­stone shattered. A soc­cer team lacks a goalie, and a local busi­ness owner has to find a new man­ager.

All because Immig­ra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment arres­ted another mem­ber of the com­munity whose only offense was being in the coun­try without legal status while await­ing a rul­ing on his asylum request.

Aus­tin is not safer because Luis Fernando Cab­rera is in ICE deten­tion. The 18-year-old senior at North­east Early Col­lege High School has no crim­inal record. Born in Mex­ico to Hon­duran par­ents, Cab­rera came to the U.S. at age 11 with his fam­ily to seek asylum because they were vic­tims of crime, not its per­pet­rat­ors.

Cab­rera and so many oth­ers caught up in Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s immig­ra­tion drag­net in Aus­tin and across the coun­try are not dan­ger­ous crim­in­als. They are not the “worst of the worst.”

Any Lucía López Bel­loza, a 19-yearold col­lege stu­dent ori­gin­ally from Hon­duras, was depor­ted last Novem­ber after try­ing to board a flight in Boston to visit fam­ily in Aus­tin for Thanks­giv­ing. In Janu­ary, Karen Guada­lupe Gutiérrez Cas­tel­lanos, a Hon­duran mother seek­ing a spe­cial visa for vic­tims of domestic viol­ence, was depor­ted along with her 5-year-old U.S. cit­izen daugh­ter after call­ing Aus­tin police for help. Des­pite his birth cer­ti­fic­ate show­ing he was born in Col­or­ado, Aus­tin res­id­ent Brian

José Mor­ales García, 25, was removed to Mex­ico in April.

Like the more than 70% of people cur­rently in ICE deten­tion — nearly 43,000 nation­wide, accord­ing to Syra­cuse Uni­versity’s Trans­ac­tional Records Access Clear­ing­house — they do not have crim­inal records. TRAC also reports that only 2% of people summoned to immig­ra­tion court in Feb­ru­ary — just 741 people — faced deport­a­tion based on crim­inal charges.

Texas is play­ing an out­sized role in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s mass deten­tions of immig­rants. With nearly 18,000 people in ICE deten­tion in April, the Lone Star State holds more than twice as many people as the second-highest state on the list, Louisi­ana.

The num­bers and the human stor­ies behind them show this is not about pub­lic safety. It is not about law and order. ICE should focus its efforts on people here illeg­ally who pose a threat to oth­ers — not the stu­dents get­ting an edu­ca­tion, not the people sup­port­ing their fam­il­ies, not the work­ers that busi­nesses need.

ICE arrests declined in some states, includ­ing Texas, since the Janu­ary killings of two U.S. cit­izens by fed­eral immig­ra­tion agents in Min­neapolis, accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press ana­lysis from April. Yet we con­tinue to see Aus­tin-area res­id­ents with no crim­inal records get arres­ted, detained and depor­ted in the name of pub­lic safety.

Each uprooted life is a tragedy on an indi­vidual level. And the broader fail­ure is that sep­ar­at­ing people like Cab­rera from their fam­il­ies does noth­ing to make any­one safer in the com­munit­ies from which they’re torn.

Cent­ral Texas has seen some of the highest rates of immig­ra­tion arrests in the coun­try, accord­ing to data ana­lyzed by the New York Times. Texas his­tory con­tains many stor­ies its people can be proud to tell. Unfor­tu­nately, this chapter won’t be one of them.