FIEL Houston said they have fielded more than 150 calls from concerned citizens reporting who they thought were ICE agents in their neighborhoods.
HOUSTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said their agents have made around 2,000 arrests over the last few days.
The enforcement comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s new immigration policies. Those include allowing ICE agents to go into places such as schools, hospitals and churches to make arrests.
Dozens of arrests have been reported across Texas. A spokesperson for ICE’s Dallas Field Office told KHOU 11 News’ sister station WFAA that 84 arrests were made in the Dallas-Forth Work area on Sunday.
An official with ICE’s Houston Field Office would not go into specifics about current enforcement operations in the Houston area, and they only told KHOU 11 News that their agents were doing “routine targeted immigration enforcement.”
FIEL Houston, an immigrant-led civil rights organization, said they have fielded more than 150 calls from concerned citizens reporting who they thought were ICE agents in their neighborhoods.
“There’s definitely a palpable sense of paranoia or fear in the community,” FIEL Houston executive director Cesar Espinosa said. “There’s a lot of reports almost every hour of people saying you know I think I saw ICE here, or there are these undercover vans here, or stuff like that.”
Espinosa said he and his team looked into all those claims, and, at least for right now, he believes most of them were unrelated to ICE operations.
“Out of, I don’t know, 150 reports that we got over the weekend, only like 2 or 3 were actual ICE showing up, but they weren’t showing up in like massive raids or something like that. They were showing up in targeted operations, apprehending one or two individuals at a time,” Espinosa said. “It’s still business as usual. We haven’t seen really an uptick in these mass raids happening. That does not mean that they’re not going to happen. That does not mean that we’re in the clear.”
Espinosa said FIEL Houston is working on ways to message the local immigrant community that they must be prepared for potential detainment by ICE – and that does not include just undocumented immigrants.
“Right now, we’re prepping, will soon to be released in the next couple days, a tool kit for folks to know what kind of stuff they need to get ready, and what they need to prepare for in case they do end up in immigration custody,” Espinosa said. “For the first time ever in our history, we’re recommending that U.S. citizens get their paperwork in order and try to get a passport card so they can carry it around with them so they can prove citizenship.”
Trump and his supporters have said the immigration policies are meant to protect the public and increase security. That includes securing the U.S.-Mexico border.
“President Trump in less than a few days, has immediately made an impact,” Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, said.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Monday that he is directing the Texas Military Department to deploy more than 400 soldiers with the Texas Tactical Border Force to the Rio Grande Valley to coordinate with the U.S. Border Patrol.
“I deployed the Texas Tactical Border Force, comprised of hundreds of troops, to work side-by-side with U.S. Border Patrol agents to stop illegal immigrants from entering our country and to enforce immigration laws. For the past four years, Texas held the line against the Biden Administration’s border crisis and their refusal to protect Americans. Finally, we have a federal government working to end this crisis. I thank President Donald Trump for his decisive leadership on the southern border and look forward to working with him and his Administration to secure the border and make America safe again,” Gov. Abbott said in a news release.
While he agreed that border security must be handled seriously, Democratic congressman, and former Houston mayor, Sylvester Turner said the potential mass deportation of innocent people is not the answer.
“There’s bipartisan support for securing the border, bipartisan support for deporting people who are here illegally who have committed serious crimes,” Turner said. “I think where you reach is objection is when you’re deporting people who are law-abiding citizens.”
Turner added that he takes issue with ICE agents going into schools, hospitals and churches to make arrests. He said he understands the fears of immigrant communities in the Houston area.
“They are rightfully concerned about their parents, their grandparents, their relatives who have been in this country for 20, 30 years. There’s a right way to do things, and there’s a wrong way to do things. Now, if you want the splash of people being handcuffed, put on military planes and leaving, you certainly can get that. But in the long run, I think the critical question is: what’s in the best interest of the American people?” Turner said.
KHOU 11 News reached out to local law enforcement agencies Monday, to see if they are assisting ICE with immigration enforcement. Both the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and the Houston Police Department said they are not involved in any such operations.