I really appreciate how Texas State Congressman Joaquin Castro calls out Governor Abbott as sanctioning police violence with the passage of Senate Bill 4 (SB4), a 2017 law passed in Texas during his administration that among other things, deputizes local governments and police to enact federal immigration policy. This means that local officers can both legally racially profile folks and ask them about their immigration status whenever they stop or arrest someone even for minor traffic violations, like a malfunctioning car lamp light which happened to someone I know and but for local mobilization efforts, would have gotten deported.
That said, according to this information put out by the ACLU, people do need to know their rights under SB4.
While clearly not all of police violence is related to SB4 as this article by Suzanne Gamboa indicates, it is nevertheless the case that with anti-immigration polices and the Federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE), Latinas/os have the tragic distinction of having a "police force" designed specifically for them. How racist is that?
And yes, Governor Abbott and the anti-immigrant state leadership are indeed "the problem," as Representative Castro states.
If our nation is heading in the direction of de-funding police departments, can we not also abolish ICE while we're at it?
-Angela Valenzuela
#AbolishICE
We are tired of it': Latinos denounce police violence as they protest George Floyd death
Beside police brutality cases, Latinos point to "stop-and-frisk" policies and officers stopping people to question them about their immigration status.
 |
| Protesters chanting at the Texas State Capital in downtown Austin on May 31, 2020.Mario Cantu / Cal Sport Media via AP Images |
For many Americans, Floyd’s death after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds was a breaking point.
But the national protests that have followed resonate with Latinos like Barrón, not just as an act of solidarity, but because of the ways police tactics and law enforcement have been used against Latinos — from laws that give police the authority to question a person’s citizenship and authorization to be in the country to deadly shootings in police actions.
“Being a Latino and having the experience where I see people both in my community and on the news all the time being hurt and being abused by a police officer, there doesn’t seem to be any accountability," Barrón said.
"You don’t need to be black to see how horrible it is,” he said. “With more police accountability, that will help us, too.”
In Austin, the protests were also billed as demonstrations against the April 24 police shooting death of Mike Ramos, described as African American and Latino. Police are investigating the officer, Christopher Taylor, who shot Ramos.
According to reports, police responded to a 911 call of people doing drugs in a car and that one of the people had a gun. Police said Ramos, 42, got out of the car but did not comply with officers’ commands. One officer fired at Ramos with a bean-bag rifle, prompting Ramos to get back in the car and start to drive away, The Austin American-Statesman reported.
According to reports, Taylor then fired at the car, killing Ramos. Police said no gun was found in the car.
At a news conference Sunday, Ramos' mother, Brenda Ramos, said: “I cry every day. Now I’m in this terrible, heartbreaking club. It’s a club of mothers of black Americans who have been murdered by police."
In a April 25 online news conference after Ramos' death, Angelica Erazo, vice chair of Austin’s Hispanic Quality of Life Commission, called on the Latino community to “not leave all the heavy lifting to the black community.”
“All too often, we do not show up when it comes to police violence and your voice is powerful and needed, too,” Erazo said.
Following the killing of George Floyd, Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of the national Latino legal civil rights organization, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, asked Latinos who have lost loved ones at the hands of police to “unequivocally say, Black lives matter!”
Cartagena, in a statement, pointed to the 1994 case of Anthony Baez, a 29-year-old security guard who died after a New York City police officer, Francis Livoti, put him in a chokehold while trying to arrest him and his brother outside their family home.
A New York state judge acquitted Livoti, who had other police brutality complaints against him. But the Justice Department won a civil rights conviction against Livoti, who was then sentenced to seven years in prison. Baez's mother's fight for justice, along with two other mothers on behalf of their children, was the subject of the film "Every Mother's Son."
In New York City, black men and Latinos, including many who identify as Afro-Latino, were caught up in the contentious stop-and-frisk policing practice that essentially sanctioned racial profiling as an anti-crime tactic.
The operation recently catapulted back into the news as former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg waged his presidential campaign and sought to enlist black and Latino support. An analysis from the New York Civil Liberties Unionfound that in 2011, when Bloomberg was mayor, more than 685,000 people had been stopped and frisked, most of them black or Latino — and nearly 9 in 10 were innocent.
Cartagena said that the video of Floyd’s arrest struck a chord with Latinos and others who have been following and seeing police abuse for decades.
“If you ever found a more perfect convergence of shared interest among Muslims, LGBTQ, black people, Latino people, everybody was clearly unified against the practices of stop and frisk,” Cartagena said.
Often Latinos are seen only through the lens of immigration. But many have decried the increasing way they are criminalized under the guise of immigration enforcement.
In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that Texas and America mourn George Floyd “and the actions that led to his death are reprehensible and should be condemned in the strongest terms possible.”
Rep. JoaquÃn Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called out the governor in a tweet as “part of the problem” and reminded Abbott that he “enacted — SB4 — that encourages racial profiling by law enforcement.”
The Texas law, SB4, was billed as a means to ensure that cities and communities cooperate with immigration officers, preventing so-called sanctuary cities. The law allows police to question the citizenship and immigration status of anyone they arrest, detain or stop, even on minor traffic stops. It allows the removal — and jail time — of any city police chief, sheriff or other official in charge if they prevent their officers or employees from cooperating with federal immigration officials.
You enacted a bill — SB4 — that encourages racial profiling by law enforcement, Governor.
You’re part of the problem. #GeorgeFloyd https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1266805280890896387 …
You’re part of the problem. #GeorgeFloyd https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1266805280890896387 …
No comments:
Post a Comment