A few facts and an observation about labor economics, immigration politics, and the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey

If readers will forgive an off-topic aside, here are a few facts and a quick observation regarding Texan labor economics, Hurricane Harvey, and the current political moment:

Fact: Hurricane Harvey is about to leave Houston facing one of the biggest reconstruction jobs in the history of the planet.

Fact: Between 28 percent and half of Texas construction workers are illegal immigrants. And Texas home prices are already rising because many of them are departing.

Fact: If President Trump's border wall is funded, either large numbers of illegal immigrants will assist in its construction, ironically, or there won't be enough workers to build it. And that's before any national infrastructure plan adds additional large jobs to the plate of the Texas construction industry.

Fact: The feds have promised ramped up immigration enforcement and the Texas Legislature passed SB 4 (aka, the "show me your papers law") mandating greater law enforcement cooperation with immigration authorities and authorizing more aggressive police tactics toward illegal immigrants. Their stated aim was to increase the number of deportations of people picked up by law enforcement, even for minor traffic violations.

All of which leads to this observation:

Despite high-profile roundups after President Trump took office - sending ICE agents into Texas courthouses to arrest domestic violence victims, for example - as a practical matter the threat of mass deportations, at least in Texas, probably ended after Hurricane Harvey. Somebody actually must perform the labor involved in rebuilding America's fourth largest city.

White Texans aren't going to learn the skills to participate in the booming building trades overnight, nor would most of us be willing to endure the labor conditions typically involved in that industry. Anyway, we're basically at full employment already in Texas and there are only so many workers.

Regardless, just as Bush II was judged on Hurricane Katrina, President Trump will be judged in a major way based on how well he handles Harvey's aftermath. This president cares deeply about others' opinions about him, and IMO he will soon come to understand that what happens in Houston going forward will define his historical legacy.

In the medium term, once someone explains the labor market issues to him, Grits suspects Hurricane Harvey may turn out to stymie the President's anti-immigration fervor for the foreseeable future. And maybe even scrap the border wall, too, at least in Texas. It will be impossible to rebuild Houston while simultaneously deporting the construction industry's labor pool, much less build a pointless 18-30 foot high wall across the desert.

In the end, you can't do all the contradictory stuff he says - eventually you have to pick - and Hurricane Harvey in all likelihood just made a lot of President Trump's choices for him.

Prison closures = Good (regardless of immigration policy)

Both the Texas House and Senate budget plans would close four additional prison units. Remarkably, the idea is hardly controversial, anymore. The only negging Grits has seen on the units' deletion from the budget comes from liberals fearful that they may be transformed into immigration detention facilities.

To be clear, these are separate questions and conflating them risks allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Texas should continue down the path of decarceration and prison closures - these will bring the total to eight closed units in the past few years - and battles over federal immigration policy mustn't be allowed to interfere with that project.

There will be a LOT of competition for immigration detention beds. It's possible shuttered TDCJ units could end up doing federal immigrant detention, but many other empty jail facilities owned by counties will be competing for those beds, too. They can't all get contracts.

States' rights Trumped: An ode to forgotten federalism

Okay, we've heard a lot about federalism and states' rights from Governor Greg Abbott over the years. So will we now hear an outcry from the governor after ICE agents showed up at a Texas state district court and arrested an undocumented domestic violence victim who'd just received a protective order from an elected Texas judge? See the details here.

Nine percent of Texas' workforce are illegal immigrants. That's a lot of people, and a lot of women and kids, to boot. Will other undocumented domestic violence victims now resist reporting their abusers to authorities because petitioning a Texas court for protection could mean they'll be arrested? Won't kids who are physically or sexually abused face the same hesitation to report serious crimes? Think about it: Is that a good idea?

Having ICE agents show up at Texas state courts is a slap in the face to the state from a President for whom it voted overwhelmingly. It's just plain disrespectful of state court processes and the concept of federalism for the feds to arrest someone the moment after a Texas state court gave out a protective order.

Grits won't hold my breath for Governor Abbott to stand up and defend states rights in this context. His endorsement of those principles has always seemed opportunistic and I don't expect him to stand on them when they fly in the face of a Republican president's policies. Party seems to matter a lot more than principle in politics these days. But a true protector of state's rights would have something to say about the feds undermining the state of Texas' ability to effectively fight crime by driving crime victims into the shadows. Maybe one day Texas will elect one.

Roundup: Jean Valjean at Christmastime and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends which haven't made it into individual Grits posts during a busy week but which merit readers' attention:

Draconian enhancements based on decades-old offenses
Thanks to "enhancements" based on felonies committed two decades ago, a Hays County man received a six-year sentence for stealing $45 worth of ground beef and toys for his children from a Walmart just before Christmas last year. The kicker: Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Brown was foreman of the jury who convicted this latter-day Jean Valjean. Les Miserables similes aside, there needs to be some statute of limitations on how long old convictions can be used to enhance new misdemeanors into lengthy prison sentences. Nothing about what this guy did 20 years ago predicts that he's a danger today; in fact, the nature of this latest trumped-up "felony" indicates his priorities have shifted. The fellow committed what otherwise would have been a Class C misdemeanor theft so he could give his kids a modest Christmas, and "To love another person is to see the face of God."

Judges call for independent crime lab
Travis County judges are calling on the city to separate its crime lab from the Austin Police Department, a move presaged by recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences in its landmark 2009 report. Grits agrees with that assessment, with one caveat: They should make the lab truly independent, as was done in Houston. What they shouldn't do is shift those functions to the county medical examiner, as some have suggested. Let's please do this right the first time. In related news, Sen. Cornyn is pushing legislation to reauthorize federal funding for crime labs and reducing rape kit backlogs.

Contempt of cop: A case study
This article from Meagan Flynn at the Houston Press depicts a class example of an arrest for "contempt of cop" by a Harris County Sheriff's deputy.

Can bureaucracy prevent jail suicides?
Despite this Texas Tribune story, Grits suspects that far too much credit is being given to a new intake form when it comes to reducing jail suicides. We'll have to see if reductions hold long-term. But it's just as likely that jails stepped up prevention efforts because the Commission on Jail Standards began making suicides a greater point of emphasis and Sheriffs didn't want to end up in the paper with the next Sandra-Blandesque death occurring in their facility. If that's the case, suicides will continue to fluctuate and may go back up as new incidents arise. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems hard to believe such a small bureaucratic change could make a huge dent in a problem rooted deep in the human psyche. My instincts say to look for a) alternative explanations and b) future increases.

Veterans courts are cool, but don't scale up
This Houston Chronicle article touts veterans courts as an intervention that works, and they do, but it's also true that they're resource intensive and don't scale up well given the volume and gaping needs of the target population. Reported the Chron, quoting the judge in charge of the project: "The common denominator of the veterans in his court is a 'very low sense of self-esteem and self-purpose,' along with self-hate." But couldn't you say that about defendants in every criminal courtroom in America? Strong probation methods work, but they require more resources than most county governments are willing to provide, and you can't place it all on the backs of defendants through expensive court fees. These courts are important experiments, but they are not yet scale-able solutions and are unavailable to most veterans who commit crimes.

Asset seizures skyrocketed since turn of century
Total assets seized by Texas law enforcement increased more than 150 percent from 2001 to 2013, according to Right on Crime. At this point, agencies have become reliant on the income in unhealthy and problematic ways. If the interdiction strategy were working, one wonders, wouldn't authorities seize LESS illicit assets over time?

LWOP for illegal immigrants makes no cost-benefit sense
Here's a legislative proposal that would cost a small fortune with little public safety benefit to show for it: Authorizing life without parole for first-degree felonies committed by illegal immigrants. Life without parole didn't exist in Texas until 2005, when death penalty abolitionists made a deal with the devil, creating the new punishment as the sole alternative available to their clients in death-penalty cases. IMO that legislation threw their clients under the bus. Since then, we've seen hundreds of people sentenced to LWOP while death sentnences dropped. But LWOP is also a death sentence, just in slow motion. Next we had people wanting LWOP for sex offenders, then for sex traffickers, and not for illegal immigrants. There's no public safety argument for this policy and the cost-benefit analysis cannot stand up to scrutiny. This is just pandering to nativist sentiments in a crass and ham-handed way. One hopes cooler, wiser, and more cost-conscious heads will prevail as the bill is considered at the Lege.

1033 program: Not as free as 'free' sounds
Lots of Texas agencies got "free" personnel carriers through the Pentagon's 1033 program, but the Texas Public Policy Foundation points out that that statement masks significant costs to locals from operating the vehicles.

CAN-DO Clemency
Grits was interested to learn of the CAN-DO Foundation, which stands for Clemency for All Nonviolent Drug Offenders. As folks push Obama to maximize his use of clemency on his way out the door,  it's worth mentioning there's still time for him to posthumously pardon the writer O. Henry, as this blog along with Pete Ruckman has long advocated.

Locked up for the holidays
In an item titled, "Locked up for the holidays," the Pew Charitable Trusts' Stateline site examined the impact of the holiday season on inmates and their families and charity work aimed at supporting both.

On the failures of Texas' eyewitness ID reform, when innocent people plead guilty, pondering immigration policy, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends to clear Grits' browser tabs of brief items which merit readers' attention:

Report confronts sexual assault in Texas prisons
Grits will have more on this soon, but for now here's the link to a new report from the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault and the Prison Justice League on sexual assaults in Texas prisons - one of the first in-depth looks at the issue since Texas agreed to comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. MORE: See coverage from the Houston Press and the San Antonio Current.

TX eyewitness reform didn't stop suggestive IDs, photo arrays
In a recent dissent, Judge Elsa Alcala effectively showed why and how Texas' eyewitness identification reforms have failed to stop convictions based on biased lineups, in this case where the suspect was the "sole one in the photo array matching the physical description of the shooter." See the majority opinion, which mostly relied on outdated criteria from older cases that predated modern best practices in this area.

Concerns over cell-phone location data legitimate, non-partisan

In Texas, lots of folks were concerned about privacy of cell-phone location data long before the recent presidential election, including loads of conservatives. So I hate to see the push for federal cell-phone privacy legislation cast in terms of fear of Donald Trump. Grits wasn't any more happy when it was the Obama Administration pushing to maximize government surveillance powers.

When innocent people plead guilty
Reported AP, "Last year, 68 out of 157 exonerations [nationwide] were cases in which the defendant pleaded guilty, more than any previous year. That's 43.3 percent, for those keeping score at home.

'Detached from reality' Crime and public perception
Following up on their own poll, discussed here on Grits, the Pew Research Center explored why "Voters perceptions of crime continue to conflict with reality." Gallup over the years has continuously found that voters perception of high crime is "detached from reality." At Vox, German Lopez has explored this odd and persistent phenomenon. The Brennan Center has found that headline mentions of murders in newspapers did not decline along with the volume of murders themselves. In this election we saw that misperception brazenly exploited by the President-elect, who went around claiming violent crime was at a 45 year high when the opposite was true. By the time he trotted that one out, he had told so many flat-out fabrications that the media''s fact checking seemed tired and pro forma, as do hubristic pretensions that media will now solve misconceptions they've actively created.

Okie Governor leading by example on criminal-justice reform
Read Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin on the recent election and criminal justice reform. She's saying the sort of things while in office that Texas Gov. Rick Perry waited to embrace until after his departure. Voters in her state just overwhelmingly voted to reduce penalties for low-level drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor. The Lone Star State should follow suit, or Oklahoma may soon supersede the Texas GOP when it comes to Right on Crime bona fides.

Pondering immigration, walls, symbols, and public opinion
Here's the problem with the Trumpian plan to deport "criminal" immigrants: After years of the Obama Administration aggressively enforcing their "Secure Communities" program - a ham-handed operation which never worked well and of which Grits was never a great fan - there aren't nearly 2-3 million of those left to deport. (Immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates than citizens. Foreign nationals account for 16 percent of Texas' population, for example, but only eight percent of arrests.)

Will "I'll do what Obama did," plus spending $10-20 billion (or whatever figure) on an American Great Wall, be enough to satisfy voters spurred to the polls by anger over Latin American immigration? Perhaps rebranding the policy as Republican will allow pols to declare victory and stop fighting, the way Texas Rs seem ready to declare victory on border security and spend the money on something else. The campaign is over now and governing requires confronting reality. Grab some popcorn and stay tuned.

In Texas, that reality includes the fact that undocumented immigrants make up more than eight percent of our active labor force. When push came to shove, while some Texas Rs have indulged in nativist rhetoric during campaigns, most have always understood and respected core interests of the business community when governing. At first blush, that seems to be the approach the president-elect will take: Talk big, wait for public discord to die down, then declare victory without really having changed anything and move on. While essentially frivolous as a border security suggestion, perhaps a "Great Wall" will serve a more important purpose as a tangible, lasting symbol. Who knows? Maybe that's what's necessary to sell Obama's immigration policy as a Republican solution that the president-elect's still angry base will accept.

Willacy County facing economic devastation after riot at entrepreneurial private prison leaves unit 'uninhabitable'

Riots in Willacy County at a private prison housing federal immigration prisoners last week has been called "predictable" and has left the facility "uninhabitable." Texas Prison Bidness reminded us that "An ACLU report [last year] detailed squalid conditions, rampant abuse, and little to no medical care at the facility."

The detention center is run by the Management and Training Corporation, which operates ten other facilities around the state, employed 373 workers at the site, about half of whom live in the Raymondville and Willacy County areas while the rest live across the Rio Grande Valley." Those folks are now looking for work. According to the McAllen Monitor, "The prison pays [Willacy County] for every inmate it holds, pumping more than $2.7 million into county coffers last year." In addition, "In Raymondville, City Manager Eleazar Garcia said the prison’s closure could mean the loss of about $50,000 a month in water sales in the city whose annual budget projected about $3.6 million in water revenue." Observed the SA Express News:

The Willacy County economy is deeply dependent on the prison industry, floating tens of millions of dollars in bonds through a “Public Facilities Corp.” to build the Correctional Center. The county also has a 500-bed detention center operated by MTC under a U.S. Marshals contract, and a 1,000-bed state jail, operated by Corrections Corp. of America.

Each of the more than 2,800 prisoners in the Willacy correctional facility puts $2.50 per day in county coffers, adding up to about a quarter of its yearly budget of $8.1 million. It’s unclear who will be ultimately responsible for repairs to the building or how soon prisoners will return, if at all, leading some officials to worry the county could soon be faced with a budget shortfall.

Further, "The county owes about $63 million on the prison that opened in 2006," according to the county auditor, but the commissioners court claims "bond holders would assume any risk." That's a bit of fanciful thinking of which I'm sure the good folks in McLennan County could dissuade them, if anyone has ears to listen. Or, maybe they'll listen to S&P, which just downgraded the county's bond rating because of episode.

As an aside, there may be other jurisdictions salivating to house these prisoners and take advantage of MTC's woes, but be forewarned. The feds (ICE) have already begun assenting to bail in immigration cases for the first time in recent memory, perhaps in part in response to bed shortages in the system from the Willacy riot but more probably in reaction to a recent federal judge's ruling, still under review by the agency, ordering ICE to "stop denying bond to Central American families solely to deter more immigration." So the feds may yet figure out how how to absorb this group without doling out new contracts to other vendors.

Bill to ban probation for illegal immigrants likely DOA after devastating critique of (un)constitutionality

When state Sen. Joan Huffman, a former district judge, filed her SB 174 forbidding sentences of probation for "illegal aliens," Grits was dismissive, declaring the bill should be dead as soon as its Fiscal Note was calculated and the costs were determined.

It didn't take that long. The bill likely, effectively died night before last when the Houston Chronicle published an item on its website by Prof. Geoffrey Hoffman of the University of Houston Immigration Clinic titled "Houston senator's 'illegal aliens' bill is itself illegal." Hoffman offered up a devastating and IMO irreparable constitutional critique that Sen. Huffman seems unlikely to overcome.

While his discussion of federal case law was compelling, according to Hoffman, the Texas Constitution includes "arguably more expansive equal protection provisions," even, than the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The article concluded:

In section 3a, [the Texas Constitution] provides that "Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed" or - importantly - because of "national origin."

Furthermore, section 3 of the state's constitution provides for equal treatment under the law, considering that "All free men, when they form a social compact, have equal rights, and no man, or set of men, is entitled to exclusive separate public emoluments. …"

The Texas Legislature should carefully consider what a misguided rule like the one proposed in SB 174 would mean. Texas judges are not immigration judges. But even if they were, the determination whether or not someone should be branded an "illegal alien" is determined after a lengthy process by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The decision is made considering the availability of relief, after a full review of a person's personal and immigration history, among many other factors. A rule which brands people without due process, and in violation of equal protection, cannot stand.

That's a strong argument. The inclusion of "national origin" in Texas' equal protection guarantee seems to this non-attorney pretty much decisive. It's hard to see the Legislature seriously considering this bill now that these grave constitutional flaws have been exposed, especially given the sky-high fiscal note the idea would surely receive if the proposal ever got far enough along in the process for the LBB to determine its cost.

Don't get me wrong, The Texas Legislature passes unconstitutional stuff all the time. But usually they maintain plausible deniability about a bill's defects at least until after its effective date. In this case, SB 174's flaws have been exposed before its first hearing and the bill would have to be altered beyond recognition to avoid running afoul of the constitutional problems Mr. Hoffman identified. Well done, sir.

John Wiley Price discovery measured in terabytes, and other stories

Here are a few items which failed to make it into independent posts over the holiday but deserve Grits readers' attention:

Violence, not jobs, driving current immigration trends
Traditionally undocumented immigrants entering Texas came because of jobs. Increasingly they're people fleeing violence, death and chaos. El Paso has witnessed an influx of refugees from the states of Michoacán and Guerrero because of extreme drug violence there, mirroring the causes of a mass influx of children from Central America earlier in the year. 

Abbott may back bills to help ex-felons get jobs
Apparently incoming Gov. Greg Abbott supports scaling back occupational licensing restrictions to help more ex-felons get jobs, a measure backed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and championed in the linked story by state Sen. John Whitmire. Given that, expect some movement on this in the coming session, though to what extent remains to be seen. "In Texas, where about a third of the jobs are licensed, that means fewer opportunities for those with a criminal past. Advocates of modifying the current licensing laws say the change could get thousands more Texans working and paying taxes and get many off welfare-assistance programs."

When the prosecutors' open file has 150 million pages
Though the figure seems unbelievable, in the John Wiley Price federal corruption case, according to the Dallas News, “Prosecutors reportedly have about 6.5 terabytes of digital information to turn over to the defense. That does not include audios, videos, photographs, tax documents or 'materials too bulky to scan,' a defense motion has said. The government has estimated that 2.5 terabytes of data will remain after 'processing and culling.'” According to the News, "That is roughly the equivalent of 150 million pages of material."

Turn out the lights: SAPD chief to leave, work for electric utility
San Antonio police chief William McManus is leaving after nearly nine years on the job to head security at the city's electric utility, reported the SA Express-News in an outgoing profile.

Novelty act?
Is the new client choice model of selecting indigent counsel in Comal County a bold new strategy or a novelty that distracts from larger issues of insufficient resources?

How to judge homicide clearance rates?
With a 65 percent clearance rate at Houston PD, "A [Houston] Chronicle review of homicide cases in Houston from 2009 through the first half of 2014 found at least 353 investigations that remain open. Stepping back through the years, the number soon tops 1,000." Parents of victims in unsolved cases insist more should be done; detectives insist when they've exhausted all leads, that's what there is to do. Broken out by race, clearance rates are highest for whites, lowest for Hispanics. The department got into trouble this year when it was revealed a detective wasn't investigating some cases assigned to him at all, so it's understandable the homicide clearance rate is a sensitive subject. In a city the size of Houston, it's unrealistic to expect 100 percent of murders to be solved.  But lamentably, any outcome short of perfection will leave the department with some very emotional and unhappy detractors among families of victims in unsolved killings. Oddly, homicide rates have fallen nationally in recent years during a period in which murder rates have also radically declined. So, surprisingly, the data show little if any correlation between solving murders and reducing their number, to the extent that's any consolation.

Restorative justice in schools
School districts across the state, including several in Bexar County, are experimenting with restorative justice models for student discipline.

Perry pardon grinch at final Christmas as governor
Humbug! No Christmastime clemency from Rick Perry on his way out the door, so apparently these four piddling pardons from October will be his last as governor. Here's hoping Greg Abbott's team will make a New Year's resolution to embrace clemency with more vigor over the next four years rather than treating it as a symbolic Christmas ritual with little real practical effect.

Three stories from the darker side of Texas history
On my personal blog, recently I wrote about three murderous Texas land grabs - targeting Mexicans, Native Americans, and black folks - about which Grits was never taught in school. Were you? As fat as that 7th grade Texas history book was, you'd think they could have fit these stories in.

McCraw: Terrorist threat at Texas border a myth, or, In favor of reality-based border-security policy: A minority view

The dumbest part of Texas' border "surge": There are no, none, zilch, zero viable metrics for measuring success. It's a truism in public policy of any sort that one cannot solve a problem one cannot measure. A Dec. 4 Austin Statesman story said DPS claimed this week that the surge worked because of increased illegal-immigrant apprehensions. but Rep. Donna Howard called them on this particular line of bullshit, pointing out “that officials also have claimed success when the number of apprehensions is down, which she said has been described as a sign of deterrence. That makes it difficult for lawmakers to figure out 'how much money to appropriate for this activity,'” she said. That's an understatement!

It's not that data-driven policy isn't possible. The McAllen Monitor recently offered thoughtful, incredibly detailed suggestions for fixing federal immigration courts that made loads of sense. (Read them, a summary won't do them justice.) Problem is, at the federal level neither party is advocating an approach that actually processes cases faster. These are good ideas, though, showing the problems are not insoluble if politicians actually wanted to resolve them.

Instead, the state plans to add 4,000 cameras along the border, another initiative that Grits considers a complete waste. There's little evidence cameras work even in crime-ridden inner-city hotspots, much less out in the boondocks along hundreds of miles of border. Then you have to pay people to watch them as well as waste manpower on responding to lots of false positives.

Finally, in a rare moment of (post-election) candor, DPS Col. Steve McCraw affirmed to the committee what anyone with access to Google already knew: That "there is 'no credible information that a terrorist has crossed or will cross' the Texas-Mexico border." I'd add one caveat: There's no evidence that terrorists are coming from Mexico to the United States to do harm. There's evidence that Texas prison gangs crossed the border south to work as soldiers in the Juarez cartel wars and may be responsible for hundreds or even thousands of murders there. Whether one considers them "terrorists" is a political and semantic question.

Otherwise, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and other state officials should adjust their rhetoric to reflect acknowledged reality from the state's top law enforcement official. Perhaps it would help to stand before a mirror each morning and recite McCraw's words aloud three times before the day begins - there is no credible information that a terrorist has crossed or will cross the Texas-Mexico border. (In particular, perhaps Breitbart Texas editors would benefit from such an exercise.) Barring that, I don't know what it will take to get Texas politicians to stop telling lies about border security threats.

More criminal justice bills pre-filed at the Texas Lege

Here are a few more bills (see here, here, here and here for earlier installments) from the first week of pre-filing at the Texas Legislature that may merit Grits readers' attention:

Can prison spending be limited to population/inflation growth rates?
There are a couple of bills out there to restrict state spending to the combined effects of inflation and population growth, like this one, so it's worth mentioning that state prison spending has far surpassed those rates consistently for more than three decades. Also, there's a basic math problem with a constitutional amendment proposed by rookie Sen. Charles Perry limiting budget growth to the sum of inflation and population growth (or personal income growth, whichever is lesser). However, to actually index spending you would multiply those rates, not add them. Over time, his method would systematically under-fund the budget if not corrected. Perhaps if legislators want a smaller budget, they should propose cuts instead of constitutional amendments.

Whither border security funding if highway money spent on highways?
Also on the budget front, SB 139 by rookie Sen. Charles Perry and SB 184 by Sen. Charles Schwertner would cease using money from the state highway fund to finance the Department of Public Safety. The questions then become: Where does DPS funding come from? And, is their border security profile sustainable without tax increases?

How to raise local property taxes everywhere
HB 191 by Rep. Jim Murphy creating mandatory minimums for people convicted of multiple misdemeanors would launch a new 21st century jail building boom in Texas. County commissioners and Sheriffs, if they're wise, will come out of the woodwork to oppose this. In many counties in recent years, rising jail costs have been the primary driver for local property tax increases.

Record custodial interrogations
State Sen. Rodney Ellis has once again filed legislation to require recording interrogations of people suspected of serious, violent offenses. Make me philosopher king and I'd require recording of all custodial interrogations, but this is a good start. Last session state  Rep. Terry Canales carried  companion legislation in the House and Grits expects him to file the bill again in the 84th session.

Prioritize saving lives over prosecution in overdose cases
Rep. Ryan Guillen put forward a version of a Good Samaritan bill, HB 225, to make it a defense to prosecution on drug charges for people who call 911 when someone they're with overdoses. There have been several versions of this kicking around over the years. Last session a version cleared committee but, like many criminal justice reform bills, never received a vote on the House floor.

Grants, policies for police bodycams
In 2003, state Sen. Royce West carried legislation that created a grant fund for police departments to apply to install dashcams in patrol cars, and most of them did. Now he's filed SB 158 which would authorize the state to issue grants for police body cams and requires those using them to create written policies that govern their use and train on them. The difference between this and the one authorizing dashcams is that in 2003, Sen. West also passed a measure authorizing a statewide bond election for money to pay for them (which voters approved) and requirements for racial profiling reporting that were more stringent if departments didn't have cameras in their cars. This bill presently includes neither as many carrots nor sticks as his earlier legislation. For body cams to be adopted as widely as dashcams, there'd need to be a pot of money to fund these grants and some incentive for departments to use them.

No probation for illegal immigrants?
In SB 174, Sen. Joan Huffman recommends that "illegal aliens" be denied the chance to receive community supervision as a punishment, another potential budget buster for both state prisons and county jails. If this bill doesn't receive a gigantic "fiscal note" it will be proof once and for all that the Legislative Budget Board's mechanism for assessing bills' fiscal cost is utterly and profoundly broken.

Last minute oppo dumps in Harris DA race, y otras historias

Here are several items which haven't made it into independent posts this week but which merit readers' attention:

Blog vs. blog in Harris DA race
The gloves are coming off as the blogosphere dukes it out over the Harris County District Attorney race. Read Big Jolly on Devon Anderson and Murray Newman on Kim Ogg. Murray's complaint seems to be that Ogg complied with a court order rather than defy a judge and go to jail for contempt of court. And here's Jolly's cheapest shot:

Prostitute Court – Ms. Anderson wants to create a special court for prostitutes because “they are victims”. Yeah, right. [Ed. note: Yeah, really.]

Teachers – Ms. Anderson is going to help HISD crack down on cheating because teachers can’t be trusted. But hey, prostitutes, ya know?

Unfair? Perhaps. But it's also really funny. What this tells me is that the campaigns are dumping the kitchen sink on one another and the stuff that couldn't get placed on TV news or in the Chronicle is now being handed to folks at the Houston Press, second-tier media and bloggers to disseminate as widely as they can before election day. Nothing wrong with that. If campaigns didn't raise the issues, it's not like the media would lay out the strongest cases against candidates or dig up dirty laundry at the DA's office on their own. Some stories only ever get told if somebody has an interest in telling them.

That said, when I worked professionally as an opposition researcher I loathed these end-of-race mud-fests, which (to me) usually are the mark of a statistically close and strategically sloppy campaign. Anyone can go ballistic. The art to oppo work is to find the Big Theme that will both defeat an opponent and simultaneously elevate your candidate, not to hit the other side with everything you've got and hope for the best. ("Those who win every battle are not really skillful," the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu opined, while "those who render others' armies helpless without fighting are the best of all.") Such kitchen-sink tactics reek of desperation by both sides. But then, there's a lot at stake. I will say it's much more fun to watch the process as a non-participant.

Is Craig Watkins in electoral trouble?
The Dallas News has a detailed analysis of the DA's race in that county. There, Republican Susan Hawk has run a more disciplined campaign than we've seen in Houston, in part because incumbent Craig Watkins seems to have barely taken the field, raising little money, using family members as campaign staff, and relying on the Wendy Davis campaign to drive turnout. So Hawk can control her own message more effectively, attacking on broad themes and letting the media and her opponent's own tone-deaf responses to their stories do most of the dirty work for her. Meanwhile, Watkins doesn't have money to frame his own message on TV, which leaves his image in the hands of his opponent and his attacks in the hands of the local press, which has not lately been kind to him. A couple of weeks ago I thought he was still the betting favorite; today I think it's a coin flip, at best. Hot race.

Human rights panel reviews hot Texas prisons
Speaking of hot, the Houston Chronicle reported that "The head of an international human rights panel recommended Monday that the federal government intercede in a legal dispute over excessive heat in Texas prisons." Texas officials say the group shouldn't be reviewing the matter until pending federal litigation is complete. See related recent coverage from The Atlantic.

A primer on approved interrogation tactics at Dallas PD
Texas Monthly's Skip Hollandsworth has a long-form piece based on the civil suit by Olivia Lord, a Dallas woman who was falsely accused by police of her husband's death (he committed suicide, see prior Grits coverage) and subjected to bullying interrogation tactics by a Dallas detective who moonlighted for the TV show The First 48.

The strange detention of Cheryl Irvin
Check out this strange story of Judge Denise Collins in Houston ordering the (probably illegal) detention of a criminal defense lawyer in her courtroom to prevent her from conferring with her client. (Probably another example of a last-minute oppo dump.)

Rod Ponton vs. Reason on synthetic drugs
West Texas DA Rod Ponton got angry with Reason magazine and fired off a 10-point rebuttal to a  of story about a synthetic drug case he's prosecuting. The magazine published his letter and addressed his points in detail, standing by their original story. Go see their back and forth along with the original article that got Ponton riled up.

'How will a small town in Arizona manage an ICE facility in Texas?'
A story from NPR with the same title as this subhed relays bizarre news regarding the management structure of what's about to become the largest immigrant detention center in the country in South Texas.

'Cops need to obey Facebook's rules'
You can't create fake profiles on Facebook, but law enforcement feels free to do so. Facebook wants them to stop.

Should the Fourth Amendment keep hotels from providing guest info to police without a warrant?
The Supreme Court will answer the question in a case they've agreed to hear from the Ninth Circuit. Here's an academic paper arguing that "the expectation of privacy in hotels should be measured in the same way that the Fourth Amendment deals with other types of residences."

Jails can (and should) opt out of federal Secure Communities program

Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton has insisted in the past that his hands are tied when it comes to participation in the federal Secure Communities program, which requires jails to place immigration holds on arrestees who are otherwise eligible for release, even though most of them were charged with minor offenses, including traffic offenses and there's scant evidence the program improved public safety.

A few years later, though, we now know that it's simply false that the Sheriff is compelled by a federal mandate to honor ICE deportation holds, as evidenced by this article from the LA Times, "More jails refuse to hold inmates for federal immigration authorities" (Oct. 4). Here's a notable excerpt rebutting the "we have no choice" meme.

Although some localities started limiting the number of immigration holds a few years ago, the trend of completely ignoring the requests gathered steam this spring after a series of federal court rulings determined that the immigration holds are not mandatory and that local agencies should not be compelled to follow them. ...

Currently, more than 225 local law enforcement agencies nationwide have adopted policies to completely ignore requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to hold an inmate for an additional 48 hours after his or her scheduled release date from jail. Another 25 agencies have limited the number of immigration requests they will honor. New York City is among those considering ways to stop or limit holds. ...

In March, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania ruled that states and local law enforcement agencies had no obligation to comply with immigration hold requests because the requests did not amount to the probable cause required by the Constitution to keep someone in jail. Other courts have come to similar conclusions.

On Monday, another federal judge in Chicago reaffirmed that local law enforcement agencies should not consider the ICE holds mandatory.

In New Mexico, all county jails are no longer honoring immigration holds, said Grace Philips, general counsel for the New Mexico Assn. of Counties.

Some county officials stopped the practice because they were fearful of exposing themselves to expensive litigation, Philips said. Others saw it as a way of relieving their already overburdened jails, especially because the Department of Homeland Security did not reimburse localities for housing the inmates during the extended stay.

In the neighboring border state of Arizona, only South Tucson is declining to grant holds, also known as immigration detainers. In Texas, it appears that no locality stopped honoring hold requests, said Lena Graber, an attorney who tracks the issue for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco.

In California, a state law implemented in January — the Trust Act — stipulates that law enforcement agencies can only honor immigration holds if the inmate who is suspected of being in the country illegally has been charged with, or convicted of, a serious offense. Also, most law enforcement agencies in the state — including the Los Angeles Police Department — adopted policies ignoring the immigration holds altogether after the federal rulings came down.

So this claim that counties' hands are tied fails to hold up to scrutiny. These are policy choices, not mandates from on high. In the current, nativist climate, perhaps they are popular choices in Texas. But Hamilton and other Sheriffs must abandon the claim that this is something the feds can force them to do. That's a fib.

That said, California's Trust Act sounds like a decent compromise on this: Limit ICE detainers to serious offenses and the controversies about un-reimbursed jail costs and mothers deported over traffic offenses go away. Few people, myself included, have a problem with ICE detaining dangerous people for deportation after they've served their sentence. My beef has always been with casting the net too widely, needlessly boosting jail costs, breaking up families and creating disincentives for witnesses and crime victims to cooperate with police.

MORE: Sheriff Hamilton stands fast despite community criticism over participation in the program.

Secure Communities program not making communities safer

One of the first comprehensive statistical analyses of the federal Secure Communities program - which engages local jailers as immigration agents to deport immigrants accused of crimes - found that the program "led to no meaningful reductions in the FBI index crime rate. Nor has it reduced rates of violent crime — homicide, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault. This evidence shows that the program has not served its central objective of making communities safer."

Texas Sheriffs, take notice and cease participation in this program.

H/T: Sentencing Law & Policy

Key Texas industries heavily reliant on immigrant labor

Here's an example why the nativist outcry over illegal immigration and border security in Texas strikes me as a disingenuous, even hypocritical stance for the state to take. Construction everywhere in Texas is booming but, reported the Houston Chronicle ("Low skill jobs hard to fill as Obama considers immigration policy," Sept. 7):

About half of all Texas construction workers are here illegally, according to a report last year by the Workers Defense Project and the University of Texas. In Houston's roaring market, it's particularly tough for employers to scoop up workers. Wages have skyrocketed.

"We don't have a sustainable workforce to do what we need to do right now in Texas," said Gregg Reyes, CEO of the Houston-based Reytec Construction Resources Inc., who said seven out of every 10 of his applicants don't have proper work authorization. "We can only bid on the projects we have people for, and it's a struggle to hire folks to do the work who are legal."

Further:

The hotel and restaurant industries say they're also facing critical worker shortages and want some sort of legal status for the workforce that is already here, said Richie Jackson, who heads the Texas Restaurant Association. In parts of West and South Texas, restaurants simply don't have enough staff to stay open every day or serve all their customers, he said. Most industries with unfilled work needs "can just export those jobs. Textiles are made in China, software is created in India," he said. "We can't export jobs. We need to import workers."

And, of course:

In Texas, whose cattle ranches and cotton crops are part of its very identity, 85 percent of the agricultural work is done by people who are here illegally, the Texas Farm Bureau estimates. But as traditional migratory patterns from Mexico has slowed and border enforcement has skyrocketed in the past decade, farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to fill jobs, pitting what was long a solidly conservative element against many Republicans seeking to curb immigration.

"The workforce shortage in the agriculture industry is very real, very chronic and it's impacting our domestic food production without question," said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, a Republican who has pushed to overhaul an agricultural guest worker program and allow a legal conditional status for the workers who are already here.

But many Republicans oppose any form of legalization for immigrants who are here illegally and call it an unfair amnesty for people who have broken the law. They also say many Americans are unemployed and should be the priority.

As long as key sectors of Texas' economy rely on illegal immigrant labor, let's stop this nonsense about deporting millions of people - including half the state's construction workforce and 85 percent of our Ag labor - or refusing to educate their (often American) kids. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

'Do border surges work?' For incumbent pols, but not really the rest of us

The Austin Statesman on Sunday published an extended investigative piece on Texas' beefed up border security efforts and posed the simple but controversial question: "Do border surges work?" The article tracks several themes examined on Grits earlier this month about the lack of articulable goals or success metrics for an expensive, open-ended deployment which now includes not just Texas DPS but 1,000 National Guard troops, all of which so far is being paid for, un-budgeted, out of the state's general fund.

Government claims victory both when seizures go up and down, making the metric meaningless for evaluating whether taxpayer money is well spent funding "surge" efforts. The authors attempt to apply a normative analysis based on the facts and interests at stake and concluded there's little evidence Texas boondoggle border surges are helping the problems they're ostensibly aimed at resolving. All these troopers and soldiers arrive at the border with no obvious jurisdiction or meaningful role to play.

Still, the bottom line answer to "Do border surges work" is "Yes," though not for the reasons one might think. Certainly they're not thwarting illegal immigration, drug smuggling, nor maximizing the state's bang for the buck fighting crime. But those expectations misunderstand what's really going on with this latest round or border security spending.

Like its predecessors dating back to Operation Linebacker, recent surges by state and local law enforcement, much less by the National Guard, are nothing more nor less than expensive political theater. Border surges "work" not to reduce crime at the border but to allow Texas pols to claim they're "doing something" about the illegal immigration since Obama won't fix the problem. Never mind that their actions also won't fix the problem and may worsen it. Or that state leaders have prioritized a politicized "surge" over road maintenance. Or that a purely martial response ignores the real and immediate humanitarian crisis facing children from Central America who're piling up like kindling in Texas-based detention facilities. The meme plays well to portions of the GOP base and in the near term, to win an election, ginning  up the base matters a lot more than the truth. As long as that dynamic holds, we'll see more border surges because incumbent politicians have seen they "work,"  at least for purposes of political expediency, though not because they make us one iota safer.

What would it mean for border security to really "work"? Grits has argued in the past that any new border security funding should go first to pay for expanded Internal Affairs capacity (or maybe some sort of anti-corruption unit) to rein in bribery and collusion with drug runners among border law enforcement that contributes to the chronic, intransigent nature of the problem. Just paying overtime for more vehicle patrols, in the end, won't accomplish much.

Meanwhile, Politifact took on questions about a purported crime wave by "criminal aliens" touted by Attorney General Greg Abbott and Governor Rick Perry to support the border crackdown. I'm not a fan of Politifact. I think their only two ratings with any real meaning are "True" and "Pants on Fire." But lo and behold, they gave a "Pants on Fire" rating to Gen. Abbott for asserting that about 3,000 murders in Texas could be attributed to lax border security, calling the claim "incorrect and ridiculous." They also gave a "Pants on Fire " rating to Gov. Perry for similar overstatements a couple of weeks prior for claiming a phony Mexican murder wave. Of course, in the real world immigrants - legal and undocumented alike - commit crimes at very low rates compared to American citizens. But one wouldn't want to let facts interfere with one's opinions, so instead we must witness the disgraceful spectacle of the state's top politicians bearing false witness to pander to the nativist wing of the GOP base.

Another, accompanying article from AP posed the question: "Lawmakers: Is beefed up border security worth it?" with the additional National Guard troops announced while I was out of town (in Mexico City, ironically), Texas is now spending $4.3 million per week out of un-budgeted general revenue to support DPS' and the National Guards' expanded presence, perhaps indefinitely. That's nearly a quarter-billion dollars per year if it goes on that long. I know people have short memories, but those who can recall at least back to the George W. Bush governorship should understand why sending soldiers to the border is as likely to end tragically as to improve things. 

Increasingly I wonder if much of the extra hype we're seeing about the border from state leaders isn't intended as a pre-emptive counter to House Speaker Joe Straus' stated desire to stop spending state highway money on DPS and spend it on roads and transportation instead. By getting him to commit to this extra spending before session even begins and Straus can appoint a new budget chair (Adios, Jim Pitts!), the Speaker seems to have been outmaneuvered, ensuring money from the state highway fund will continue to be siphoned to DPS, perhaps even in increased amounts. Col. McCraw and his allies knew better than to let a crisis go to waste and seized on the humanitarian plight of Central American kids to justify proposing a much more militarized southern border.

That's my best guess as to the larger chess match being played here, with all the overheated border security rhetoric that's dominated the public debate a convenient smokescreen for DPS and its allies hoping to stave off budget cuts if their highway money goes kaput. Now it's the Speaker's move. He can acquiesce, or insist after some respectable interlude that DPS prioritize and cut other spending in its budget to cover the cost. That'd be a Hail Mary, though. He'd need a strong Republican Senate ally (or a governor with line-item veto power) to pull himself out of the corner he's been backed into.

Regardless, that to me seems like the Speaker's only option, besides giving up his quixotic push to spend highway funds on highways before it ever properly got off the ground.

Immigrants (still) arrested at very low rates

A reporter pointed me to this page on the Texas DPS website titled "Texas Criminal Alien Arrest Data" posting material that Col. Steve McCraw has been using to promote the state's beefed up border strategy. Check it out.

The data, though, lack context. Notice that the first chart is not to scale - arrests of "criminal aliens" are in fact a small proportion of the whole: Eight percent of statewide arrests is much lower than the 16 percent of Texas residents who are foreign born. The rest were "Non Alien Arrestees," in DPS' parlance, which I guess is how we now label "citizens." (In this context, "alien" includes both legal and undocumented immigrants.)

In any event, foreign-born residents account for sixteen percent of Texas' population but just eight percent of total statewide arrests, by DPS' data. That's not exactly a raging crime wave.

'Fiscal impact of border security'? Spend less on roads

Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus this week appointed a committee to focus on the "fiscal impact of border security and support operations." According to a press release, "Speaker Pro Tempore Dennis Bonnen of Angleton will chair the new committee. Its membership will also include Reps. Greg Bonnen of Friendswood, Myra Crownover of Denton, Drew Darby of San Angelo, Donna Howard of Austin, Oscar Longoria of Mission, Marisa Márquez of El Paso, Sergio Muñoz, Jr. of Palmview, John Otto of Dayton, Sylvester Turner of Houston and John Zerwas of Simonton."

Here's what's interesting to me. Before the recent episode with child migrants, Speaker Joe Straus had been maneuvering to have the House consider whether to stop diverting highway money to DPS and spend the money instead on transportation projects. Then, within a month or so of adopting that stance, the Speaker joined with the governor and lieutenant governor to approve an emergency expenditure of $1.3 million per week on expanded DPS patrols in the Valley. But a lot of the "extra" spending thrown DPS' way in recent years - $500 million, by Rick Perry's count - has gone to (IMO wasteful and pointless) border security operations. So Straus has endorsed both sides of this issue in a matter of weeks.

If Texas wants to divert money from DPS to roads - and in the big picture that's probably a wise prioritization of state expenditures - then politicians starting with Straus must find a counter to nativist scare tactics that have made "border security" such an unlikely spending imperative among the state's political class. Ironically, the mayor of McAllen doesn't believe there's a crisis or an "emergency." Perhaps Straus should look to him and other local officials in the Valley for rhetorical and policy responses to border-security hype. Otherwise, that hype will roll over him when he tries to expand transportation funding next year.

Surging toward Groundhog Day, and other stories

Here are a few items that deserve Grits readers' attention but haven't made it into independent posts:

Pointless 'surge': Waiting for the punchline
DPS' $1.3 million per week border surge IMO is a bad joke. Brandi Grissom must think it's Groundhog Day. How many "surges" have we witnessed in Texas since Operations Linebacker, Wrangler, etc.? What did they solve? And how will this one convince some teenager in Honduras not to begin the march northward fleeing oppression and poverty to come here for a job that Texas businesses want give him? The feds seem to have a more pragmatic response: bringing in emergency judges to process immigration cases. Maybe this would be a good time for the US Senate to fill some of Texas' empty federal judicial posts.

Eat This
A Tyler company admitted no guilt as it entered into a $392,000 settlement with the US Department of Agriculture after meat it sold as pet food wound up being fed to inmates at the federal Bureau of Prisons.

'Pregnant women in Texas county jails deserve better than this'
Horrific. From the Dallas News (June 26), "A federal lawsuit in Wichita Falls shines a spotlight on a dramatic example of how the opportunity for lifesaving medical intervention is often missed in county jails. In this case, a child was tragically lost." See the full, gut wrenching column coauthored by the Texas Jail Project's Diana Claitor and Burke Butler of the Texas Civil Rights Project.  

Arson and false convictions
As evidence that Texas' arson review has had national influence, check out this NBC piece on a Michigan man exonerated in an arson-murder case. It hails Texas as authoring "the most comprehensive overhaul of fire investigation in the nation" and holds up the state fire marshal's review of old cases as a model.

Weather litigation heating up with summer
The Dallas Observer has details from one of the lawsuits over excessive heat at Texas prisons focused on the Hutchins State Jail. Wrote Sky Chadde, "Larry McCollum's death received most of the press. McCollum was a 58-year-old Hutchins inmate -- in for a nonviolent crime -- who suffered a seizure after several 100-degree-plus days in a row. At the hospital, his body temp was 109.8 degrees. He fell into a coma and died six days later, from living in a place with high temperatures and no A/C. Lawyers from the Texas Civil Rights Project sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs the state's prison system. That lawsuit is still playing itself out, but now the department has another one on its hands." The story noted at the end that, "Recently, the AP reported that the criminal justice department is hoping to make seven state prisons a little more bearable by using large fans, like those football teams use to cool down on game days."

FBI to TX: Give our informant a PI license
Eric Dexheimer at the Austin Statesman has the story of an FBI informant with impeccable references from his handlers who was nonetheless turned down for a private investigator license because of his criminal history.

Bad analogies and the Fourth Amendment
Here's hopeful assessment from Vox of the import of yesterday's SCOTUS decision that cell phones can't be searched incident to arrest. "The Supreme Court's new attitude is best summarized by a single sentence in the opinion. The government had argued that searching a cell phone is no different from searching other items in a suspect's pocket. That, the court wrote, 'is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.'" Much of the debate surrounding the Fourth Amendment in the 21st century hinges on bad analogies, the author argues.

Habeas corpus post-Guantanamo
The Stanford Law Review has a nice little summary of the effectuation of federal habeas corpus and due process rights in recent D.C.-circuit case law for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

There are also worthy, recent items at Texas Prison Bidness, Defending People, and The Defense Rests.

Pot penalties, jails and mental health, prison heat, recording interrogations, immigration and judges

Here are several items that aren't going to make it into independent Grits posts but which deserve readers' attention:

Pot penalties too harsh on large amounts and small
The Statesman editorial board joined the chorus this week to say the 5-99 year penalty range being applied for pot brownies to a Williamson County teen is too harsh. While I don't believe the kid's at significant risk of spending 99 years in TDCJ for the offense or anything like it, it's true the penalties are out of whack. We've talked about reducing marijuana penalties on the misdemeanor end, but is there any level of marijuana possession that deserves the same first-degree felony charges one would get for murder or kidnapping? Really all Texas marijuana penalties, not just user-level penalty categories, should be ratcheted down one notch.

Harris Sheriff blasts state for failure to fund mental health treatment
Reported Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia says the Department of State Health Services "is not offering the care that it is required to provide." "Given proper treatment, the sheriff argues, some patients would not be committing the crimes of which they are accused. Instead, they end up in Harris County’s jails, where they are a health care and financial burden to the county." Garcia's "recommendations include increasing staff for the hospitals and expanding capacity by contracting with local providers whenever possible" I do find questionable Garcia's claim that "the majority of people who are in my custody who are in this mental illness category are coming here largely because of their illness and not necessarily because of their actions." IMO, that's not true, and the best research on the topic conflicts with that view. Mental-health treatment is an important component for the sub-group of offenders who need it, but it's not a silver-bullet cure all.

Veterans, PTSD, and medical pot
Grits recently spent a morning in San Antonio listening to Texas legislators from two House committees discuss Veterans Courts and treatment services for ex-military personnel charged with crimes who suffered from PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury. But nobody addressed the question from the angle taken by Bill Martin in this June 2014 Texas Monthly story, "War Without End": Medical pot. The subhed to his story sums up his well-versed argument: "As veterans return home from combat in the Middle East, many struggle to leave their experiences behind. They are sleepless, anxious, and angry. And medications often make the situation worse. No wonder a growing number of former soldiers are turning to a treatment that makes them criminals in Texas: Marijuana."

Texas heat litigation seeks class-action status
Yet more litigation has been filed related to excessive heat in Texas prisons, this time out "at a Navasota lockup where [inmates] allege it is so hot that metal tables are too hot to touch and metal-walled cell blocks are like ovens." According to the Houston Chronicle, out of all the various heat-related lawsuits against TDCJ, this is "the first one seeking class-action status that could open the prison system up to statewide litigation." See additional coverage from Texas Monthly and the Washington Post.

A law enforcement response to a humanitarian crisis
So thousands of unaccompanied minors show up at the Texas border from Central America: Texas' response: DPS will conduct another pointless "surge" at a cost of $1.3 million per week. If Texas Republicans want to a) show it's untrue they cease to care about children the moment they're not aborted, b) convince Latino voters to stop believing they're a bunch of xenophobic zealots, and c) confront actual problems at the border instead tilting at trumped up fictions, why not respond with humanitarian assistance for the kids instead of overtime pay for troopers to drive around the Valley? Just a thought.

New US Senate filibuster rules haven't busted Texas' federal judge shortage 
Like the Statesman editorial board, I'm glad to see more federal judge slots filled in Texas, but as  Jazmine Ulloa reported, "federal judicial vacancies across the state remain among the highest nationwide, even as the Texas courts struggle to handle some of the busiest and most complicated dockets in the country. Recent budget cuts have compounded the problem." Couple the ongoing shortages with the recent arrival of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children at the Texas border and all the family law issues those cases will entail, and the feds need to fill judicial vacancies in the southern and western districts, in particular. Wrote Ulloa, "Two more vacancies are expected within the next year," so, "If there are no replacements by then, one federal bench in every five in the state will be empty. And there aren't enough judges allotted to Texas' Western district to handle their dockets, even if they were fully staffed at present levels. How is it possible to stiffen up immigration enforcement if the federal judiciary isn't staffed up sufficiently to handle the caseload?

Arguments against recording interrogations falling by wayside
If the FBI can record custodial interrogations, why can't Texas? Momentum on this issue is shifting. The Rodney Ellis/Terry Canales bill requiring police to record interrogations in serious cases has a good chance to finally make it through the Texas legislative process in 2015.

Jarrell police chief engaged in fraud, and other police misconduct news

This is one of the more crass examples of law-enforcement fraud I've run across recently. Reported the Austin Statesman:

The former police chief of Jarrell pleaded guilty Friday to federal fraud charges, admitting he accepted bribes from undocumented workers to help them obtain temporary immigration status.

Appearing before a U.S. magistrate judge in Austin, Andres Tomas Gutierrez answered a series of mostly yes-or-no questions during the 40-minute hearing. The former small-town police chief admitted to a single charge of wire fraud/theft of honest services stemming from a federal investigation that alleged he took payments from several people to give them immigration benefits for helping with bogus police investigations. ...

As for the undocumented workers caught in the scam, [US Attorney Robert] Pitman said those victims “at no point presented a public safety threat,” and they will remain in the country for the time being. They now legitimately qualify for the temporary immigration status available to people cooperating with a criminal investigation, he said.

An earlier story gave more detail about the scheme:

Court records say Gutierrez collected the payments from the fall of 2011 to November 2013. Two other people, who weren’t named in the court documents and didn’t work for the city of Jarrell, introduced Gutierrez to undocumented workers who had money to pay for immigration benefits, the documents said.

Gutierrez and the two people working with him told the illegal immigrants they would be working as informants for the Jarrell Police Department, the documents said. As they asked for the payment, they “lied to the (undocumented residents), telling them that the Jarrell Police Department would receive the money and use it to pay expenses related to official business,” the documents said. In fact, authorities said, Gutierrez and his accomplices kept “the money for their own personal use,” the documents said.

Then Gutierrez emailed applications to U.S. government officials in Austin, seeking a special type of immigration status for those individuals by claiming they were helping the Jarrell Police Department with narcotics and human trafficking investigations, authorities said. The “Significant Public Benefit Parole” — available to foreigners who assist local, state and federal law enforcement agencies — allows them to remain in the United States for one year. It can be renewed by a law enforcement agency.

RELATED POLICE MISCONDUCT NEWS: Last month, an East Texas police chief was sentenced to five years in prison for running a license plate check on behalf of a suspected meth dealer. ALSO: Reported the Austin Statesman, "A former Austin police officer has pleaded guilty to giving false information to federal authorities during a credit card fraud investigation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office." AND: A now-former Tarrant County Sheriff's Deputy was sentenced to 30 years in prison for impregnating a 16-year old relative. AND: Reported AP, "Federal prosecutors say a former sheriff's deputy in West Texas has been sentenced to four years in prison for distributing cocaine."