AG Sessions Touts Trump's Immigration Policies During Austin Visit

AUSTIN, TX — In a visit to Austin on Friday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions promoted Donald Trump's immigration stance — including his vow to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — while protesters outside decried his message.

"The president is determined, first and finally, to build a wall at the border," Sessions said, as reported by the Texas Tribune. “It will send a message to the world that we enforce our laws. It sends a message: Finally we mean it. It says don’t come unlawfully, file for lawful entrance and wait your turn.”

Sessions' 20-minute speech in downtown Austin was delivered to a group of law enforcement officers and invited guests. During his talk, he decried a perceived "open borders" lobby while praising the GOP-led Texas Legislature for passing the controversial Senate Bill 4 that gives law enforcement officials at the local level broader leeway in rooting out undocumented immigrants as part of their work duties — effectively making them de facto Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents, according to the measure's harshest critics.

Aggressively championed by Gen. Greg Abbott, SB 4 seeks to compel local law enforcement officials to honor all so-called "detainers" at the behest of ICE — requests to hold those suspected of being undocumented to give ICE agents enough time to fetch them for deportation. The law also allows cops to inquire about a person's residency status even during routine traffic stops. It also contains provisions for fining and jailing sheriffs, police chiefs and others viewed as not being compliant with SB 4.

"I am well aware that this law has its critics," Sessions said of SB 4, as the Tribune reported. " And I am more than familiar with the arguments and the criticisms that are being made. But the facts of the case are clearly on Texas’ side."

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in August blocked a portion of SB 4 requiring the honoring of all detainers, and halted other vagaries of the law. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear the entire case on SB 4 in November.

In his speech, Sessions also applauded Trump's decision to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) that grants relief for deportation to some 800,000 immigrants (120,000 in Texas alone) brought into the country as children — the so called Dreamers. Studies on the immigrant group have illustrated their contributions to society in a wide range of careers and undertakings, but Sessions disputed the notion.

“The open-borders lobby talks a lot about good kids — those who are here, though, unlawfully," Sessions said. "But open-borders policies aren’t even in their interest either. That had terrible humanitarian consequences — and I think Texans know that firsthand,” he said, although it's unclear to which dire consequences he referred.

Given the polarizing nature of his message in Austin — a city that has been targeted for bolstered ICE immigration enforcement since Trump took office — protesters gathered outside the building where Sessions spoke to decry his presence. Some 50 dozen people marched along a stretch of Congress Avenue while shouting protest chants and carrying signs, including a few likening the former GOP senator to a Ku Klux Klan member.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence they came here,” Cristina Tzunzin, the executive director of Jolt, an immigrant rights advocacy group, told the Tribune. “They’ve come here to threaten and intimidate our locally elected officials.”

Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez was among those attending Sessions' speech. In no small measure, it was Hernandez who served as unwitting muse for Abbott's insistence that lawmakers craft SB 4. Up until the court upheld much of the law, Hernandez opted for a more relaxed implementation of detainer requests, honoring them when they involved people with felonies in their criminal histories rather than among those with misdemeanors or no criminal histories at all.

After Sessions' speech, Hernandez issued a statement taking issue with the attorney general's portrayal of SB 4: "In his press conference today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a point that SB 4 makes our communities safer. I could not disagree more strongly. SB 4 does not make our communities safer and Attorney General Sessions does not know our community. However, at least I was invited to the table, along with my colleagues to discuss the issue. That’s more than I ever received from the state of Texas."

Amid the din of debate over SB 4, Abbott has even gone so far as to call for her removal from office given her stance on immigration policy enforcement. In the past, the governor has excluded her from meetings related to law enforcement by not sending out an invitation to the duly-elected sheriff.

Still, Hernandez lauded some aspects of Sessions' presentation: "On a positive note, we were able to address the matter of the mental health crisis in our community and our nation. The mental health community is underrepresented and poorly served, which requires more resources to keep a larger percentage out of our jails."

She categorized the attorney general's talk as a good beginning toward sparking dialogue even while she disagreed with the crux of the speech: "Open and honest dialogue is important to me and to this agency. Though I did not agree with most points in today’s presentation, the conversation was a start."

Officials at Grassroots Leadership, a civil rights watchdog, also had harsh words against Sessions ahead of his visit. Officials there noted Sessions, in testimony before Congress on Oct. 18, threatened to strip federal funding from so-called "sanctuary cities" seen as too welcoming of immigrants.

“We know that the real reason Sessions is coming is to defy the Austin community as we are fighting to ensure that Austin is a sanctuary city for all,” said Claudia Muñoz, immigration programs director at Grassroots Leadership. “Even as we continue to be attacked by Paxton, Abbott, and the Trump administration, we will show Sessions that he will not break us and we will resist any and all steps he takes against us. He is not welcome in our city.”

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