File photo: Mayor Sylvester Turner (center) holding a press conference, last month, at the Baker-Ripley Center, located in southwest Houston, to announce the creation of the Office of New Americans, which will Houston residents, especially immigrants and refugees, to access City services with more ease. The City of Houston has always clarified its stance on immigration amid the controversy over sanctuary cities.
Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner has issues a statement, assuring residents of safeness against profiling and discriminative policies against immigrants. Turner’s comment comes amidst a current tension over President Donald Trump’s executive orders putting approximately 11 million nation’s undocumented immigrants under a removal process.
These undocumented immigrants could be made a priority for deportation as a result of the executive order, according to legal alerts. The order delimits several categories of undocumented immigrants who are priority for removal from the United States including those who have been “charged with any criminal offense” or those who have “committed acts that constitute as a chargeable offense.”
According to Mayor Turner “I know there are a lot of families and children who are afraid and worried right now about what might happen to them. I want them to know that Houston is, and always has been, a welcoming city, where we value and appreciate diversity.”
Turner further reinstated the City’s commitment not to use the local police officers for immigration enforcement. “HPD is not the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We don’t profile, and we are not going to start profiling people to determine whether they are here illegally. It hasn’t happened under previous mayors, and it will not happen under my administration,” he said.
Trump’s action validates his campaign vows, that all undocumented immigrants would be deported. Expert analysis of Trump’s orders reveal that anyone who came to the U.S. illegally — that is without passing through border inspection committed a criminal misdemeanor and could fall into the priority removal category.
In Houston, the most diverse city in the United States, where immigrants of all categories dwell in large numbers, Trump’s latest immigration actions have set immigrant families in agonizing fears.
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