Texas Judge Accused of Calling Immigrants ‘Wetbacks’
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A Texas judge who came out of retirement to take part in the state’s controversial police and military crackdown on undocumented immigrants was reported last week to an ethics panel for allegedly complaining to lawyers about “wetbacks.”
The Daily Beast has obtained a copy of the formal accusation, which is laid out in a sworn complaint that was submitted to the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Judge Edgar Allen Amos now faces a potential ethics probe, which if substantiated, would call into question every ruling he’s made in local Texas courts. Amos routinely adjudicates cases involving arrests of Spanish-speaking people who fled Mexico and Central America, illegally crossing the U.S. border to find refuge here.
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In the complaint, defense lawyer Emily Miller recalls crossing paths with the judge on July 26 at the McCulloch County Courthouse, where Amos stations himself at a computer to conduct virtual court hearings on Zoom while arrestees remain 150 miles south at a courthouse near the border.
“He mentioned he did not think people understood how hard ‘we had it’ in these hearings. As the hearings are technologically, logistically, and emotionally difficult, I agreed,” Miller wrote in the complaint. “He went on to say that these people (meaning the defendants) are not ‘your regular wetbacks. They have phones and clothes and all kinds of other things.’”
“I took that to mean that he believes the defendants are affluent and not really indigent, and are not like the migrants making their way into the U.S. in years or decades past. I was dismayed and disappointed,” Miller continued, noting how his comment “raises substantial questions about his impartiality and the quality of justice being served in his court.”
Amos did not respond to questions sent Friday to the court clerk in Kinney County, where he is currently situated as a “visiting judge” who dials in to preside on cases stemming from the state’s “Operation Lone Star.”
Miller declined to speak about the matter on the record.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a radical Republican who keeps pulling off xenophobic political stunts that involve sending buses full of migrants to New York City and the nation’s capital, drew intense criticism last year when he launched a law enforcement blitz against illegal immigration.
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The multi-billion dollar Operation Lone Star mobilized soldiers at the state’s National Guard and cops at its Department of Public Safety to conduct arrests all over the state under the guise of a crackdown on drug and migrant smuggling. But nearly half of the 7,200 arrests made by state police over a seven-month period amounted to nothing more than a “trespassing” charge, according to a critical analysis conducted by ProPublica, The Marshall Project, and The Texas Tribune. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and six other civil rights groups have called for the Department of Justice to step in and halt the program.
“Absent federal intervention, it provides a blueprint for other Texas localities and other states to join in similar use of the criminal system to discriminate against Black and Brown migrants and seek to effectuate a separate, punitive state immigration system,” they warned in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last year.
Amos is a lifelong Texan from the tiny city of Menard who moved just a few miles north in 1979, when he and his wife bought a local newspaper, The Eden Echo, according to her public obituary. They ran the business together until 1994, when he was elected a Concho County judge—and remained until his recent retirement.
According to court clerks, Amos started working again recently to preside over Operation Lone Star cases in Kinney County, where his supervising judge has been making incendiary remarks about migrants in the open.
Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan has appeared on Fox News to complain how “now all the Border Patrol has become is a professional Uber service,” warning that undocumented immigrants are “coming to a neighborhood near you.” Shahan officially issued a “local state of disaster” last year that cited “the thousands of illegal aliens invading our great State of Texas.” And he issued another one last month that cited “an imminent threat of disaster.”
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Shahan did not respond to an email from The Daily Beast asking whether the allegations against his visiting judge puts into question every ruling he’s made on these cases.
The State Commission on Judicial Conduct’s executive director, Jacqueline R. Habersham, said she could not comment on the complaint “due to the agency’s strict statutory confidentiality rules.” However, Habersham said the commission would make any discipline against the judge public.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center called on the commission to remove Judge Amos from the bench “until his comments and his overall judicial conduct are thoroughly investigated.”
“We also call on the commission to investigate Judge Shahan and other elected officials who are actively carrying out this operation,” the ILRC said in a statement. “The people of Texas deserve an impartial judiciary that protects the due process rights of all individuals, regardless of their race or national origin.”
“These allegations also highlight the racial animus at the root of Governor Abbott’s unlawful scheme,” the center’s policy attorney, Priscilla Olivarez, said in an email.
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