Texas House overnight advances bill to detain, remove undocumented persons

Overnight the Texas House approved a proposal to allow law enforcement officers to arrest and detain individuals believed to have entered the state illegally.

The often fraught debate on House Bill 4, authored by Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, began Wednesday evening before the chamber advanced the legislation to the Senate by an 84-60 partisan vote around 4 a.m. Thursday.

Additionally, Senate Bill 7 — a ban on private employers requiring employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine — and SB 4, which increases the state's criminal penalties for human smuggling, were both advanced to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk on partisan votes early Thursday morning. Legislation to approve $1.5 billion for the construction of 50 miles of border wall also was advanced for the Senate's consideration.

After a lengthy pause following a brief confrontation between Republicans and Democrats on the House floor as they worked through parliamentary procedures Wednesday evening, members of the minority party offered dozens of amendments in an attempt to blunt broad ramifications of HB 4 as they argued the legislation to be cruel, clumsy and unrealistic.

"You're essentially writing a law that is intended to create chaos," Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston charged, challenging a lack of specificity on transportation requirements for potential forced deportations.

As per HB 4, undocumented people accused of entering the state other than through an international port of entry could face penalties beginning with a Class B misdemeanor and up to a second degree felony charge if there is a refusal to comply with an officer's order to leave the country.

Nearly all of the amendments the House considered through the marathon session were ultimately rejected, including clarifications on prosecution parameters and language to deter detention and removal of women and children.

However, lawmakers did amend the legislation to create an exemption from the bill's penalties and removal provisions for people who are under 18 attending a private or public school, church, or hospital. An additional provision would exempt sexual assault victims seeking forensic examinations from prosecution and deportation.

Through members' countless arguments and complaints about the bill both officially on the record and in conversation around the chamber, Rep. Claudia Ordaz, D-El Paso, called the bill an unfunded mandate and raised concern about allowing any peace officer in the state to detain a person accused of being undocumented.

Ordaz submitted an amendment that was ultimately turned down and would have only allowed officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety to make arrests under the bill, as opposed to it allowing "any peace officer" to enforce the state's attempt at immigration law, which is constitutionally solely the purview of the federal government.

"If this is an action we want to take as a state, let's put the onus on our commissioned DPS officers who are ready overseeing Operation Lonestar," Ordaz said before the amendment failed.

Reps. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and Ann Johnson, D-Houston, did much of the heavy lifting in trying to add guardrails to the legislation's provisions to codify detained individuals' rights to due process and parameters on evidence tied to possible immigration cases, though they were unsuccessful in getting their amendments accepted.

Moody argued that everyday Texans could be charged under the potential new law.

"When I tell you that lawful citizens will be presented at a port of entry for removal I am not trying to spook you I'm telling you that is going to happen," Moody said, earlier in the morning before the bill cleared the chamber for the Senate.

Breaking to begin a new legislative day around 3:30 a.m., lawmakers were allowed to give the final approval on the bills without waiting for an actual day on the calendar to pass.

The House has adjourned until Monday at 4 p.m. The Senate convened for a floor session at 10 a.m. Thursday.

Lawmakers break after confrontation on the House floor

Tempers flared on the House floor shortly before 6:30 p.m. as members gathered in what could be compared to a bench clearing donnybrook based on a motion to limit comments on House Bill 4, which seeks to increase criminal penalties for entering Texas from the southern border outside of a port of entry.

The frustration boiled over as Democrats tried to stop the motion by Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, through a series of parliamentary inquires.

Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, frustrated after a series of inquires failed to stop the motion, walked over to Harris to plead his case, vocally and explicitly expressing how the legislation affects his family's security and daily life.

"You all don't understand," Walle told Harris. "It hurts us to our f—— core."

As voices rose, members of each party stood behind their respective affiliated colleague in a situation analogous to a bench clearing baseball brawl.

With 46 amendments currently filed, parliamentarians confirmed that amendments are still allowed to be offered on the filed amendments themselves. The House is standing at ease until 7 p.m.

House gives initial approval to $1.5B border wall bill

The Texas House on Wednesday gave initial approval to House Bill 6, a proposal to spend $1.5 billion to build 50 miles of wall along the border with Mexico, and also gave a thumbs up to a separate plan to increase penalties for human smuggling or operating a stash house, where smuggled individuals are held, often against their will.

Before the partisan 84-61 vote on HB 6, Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, defended his barrier bill in the face of Democratic opposition, saying the humanitarian crisis at the southern border warrants the state's further investment in a physical deterrent.

Some of the concerns raised about the bill surrounded the actual placement of the barrier, how the money will be spent and what acquiring land for the wall will encompass.

Several amendments were rejected, as they had been all day on all bills. However an addition by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, was accepted to bar the state from contracting on the border project with companies that have been associated with antisemitic and white supremacy groups.

If HB 6 receives a second affirmative vote in the House, which could come by the end of day or later this week, lawmakers would have allocated more than $3 billion to Gov. Greg Abbott's office to build an anticipated 100 miles of border wall.

Similarly, Senate Bill 4, which creates a minimum 10-year sentence with additional felony penalties possible, requires one more affirmative vote to clear the chamber.

Lawmakers are now debating a proposal to increase the penalty for illegal border crossings to penalties ranging from a Class B misdemeanor to felony charges.

Texas border bills yield to proposal to ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates

As House Republicans look to advance an $1.5 billion proposal to fund the construction of 50 miles of wall along the Texas-Mexico border, the chamber is slowly working through a separate bill to ban private employers from requiring workers to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccine restriction bill, authored by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, and Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, has been questioned and challenged by Democrats on several points of order, a legislative maneuver that seeks to stop consideration of the legislation's language in question.

Once House members vote, likely in favor of the ban on vaccine mandates in the Republican-dominated chamber, the lawmakers will likely take up a couple border security proposals through the afternoon and possibly late into the evening.

Along with House Bill 6, the border wall construction proposal, the House is slated to take up HB 4, which seeks to increase the penalty for those who come into the country outside of a legal port of entry. The bill, differing slightly from a previous Senate version, includes a provision that would allow law enforcement officers to physically remove undocumented persons from the country under threat of additional criminal charges.

More specifications and clarification on the bill are anticipated during floor debate, during which Democrats will try to limit or kill the bill, according to members who held a news conference Wednesday morning.

Texas Democrats vow House floor fight on border bills

The Texas House is set to debate legislative bills Wednesday that propose to spend $1.5 billion to build 50 miles of wall along the Texas-Mexico border and increase penalties for illegal border crossings. House Democrats and the chamber's Mexican American Legislative Caucus say they are putting all their weight behind killing those measures.

"Every year our families have had to defend ourselves against legislation that calls us thieves simply for doing what our nation's founding fathers did before us. And that's seeking a better life in this country — this country of opportunity and of abundance," said Rep. Neave Criado, D-Dallas, the caucus chair, during a news conference Wednesday morning.

Democrats' concern with House Bill 6, the border wall proposal, comes down to a lack of transparency and parameters guiding the barrier construction. The state currently has 40 miles of border wall under construction, and Gov. Greg Abbott hopes to build the addition 50-mile stretch by late 2026 with the $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have also criticized House Bill 4, which would create penalties ranging from a Class B misdemeanor to a second degree felony for crossing the border outside a port of entry and allow law enforcement officers to "remove a person detained for a violation."

Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, said his district has a large immigrant community and would be affected by the potential mandate on local law enforcement to enforce immigration law without training or more detailed specifications for an immigration offense, which is the job of the federal government to adjudicate.

"In my district, nobody knows if you're here with papers, without papers, applying for papers, you have your papers rejected, forgotten to renew your papers," Wu said. "Whatever it is, you can't look at somebody and tell what their status is."

The Democrats' news conference comes after House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and other leading Republican House members visited the border on Tuesday, viewing the situation from the air, ground and water.

As the House is poised to advance the border barrier and illegal entry legislation, Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, said that the proposed wall construction spending, which if passed would total over $3 billion in funding for the effort, will not be the end of the conversation.

"I hate to say this, but this might be a down payment on future wasteful spending," said Walle, a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas House OKs bill allowing arrest, removal of undocumented people