By Edmond Ortiz
San Antonio officials hope to do more than litigation or an environmental impact assessment towards slowing down or stopping the federal government’s efforts to set up and support a detention center for undocumented migrants.
What you should know
City Council voted 9-2 Oct. 15 to pass a resolution, asking the city manager and city attorney to work with stakeholders, including business owners, nonprofits, neighborhood associations and local government entities, to prevent or delay Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) development of a migrant detention facility at 542 SE Loop 410.
Local leaders announced Oct. 13 that the city would be filing a lawsuit in federal court, claiming that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has yet to follow federal laws by conducting an environmental review of the detention center site prior to conversion of the existing warehouse.
Council’s lawsuit filing comes days after council adopted a separate resolution, requesting the San Antonio Water System and CPS Energy to analyze the detention center’s potential impact on local water and electrical systems.
Bexar County Commissioners Court passed a separate resolution last spring, stating opposition to ICE’s proposed detention facility, and county leaders are now exploring their legal options to take further steps against the federal government.
But that’s not all. Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and District 3 Councilmember Phyllis Viagran are among the city’s top elected leaders voicing worry about ICE landing an estimated $51 million worth of leases for two office buildings at Brooks, the mixed-use development that lies a short drive from the proposed detention facility property. The leases are good for 15 years.
Additionally, ICE is receiving cooperation from law enforcement agencies in at least a half-dozen San Antonio-area towns and suburbs, such as Balcones Heights, Hollywood Park and China Grove, sparking outrage from local detractors.
What they are saying
Council members favoring this week’s resolution insisted that the measures the city is undertaking are designed to ensure the federal government follows its own laws in trying to open and run what is already seen by many local residents as a controversial facility.
Many city leaders also said ICE’s expanding footprint and controversial tactics have resulted in the detention of innocent people, and continue to threaten the public safety of local residents and employers.
Viagran represents the area where Brooks is situated. She said given the controversy surrounding the federal government’s aggressive approach toward illegal immigration, the opening of an East Side ICE detention center and ICE’s office operations at Brooks could yield a ripple effect, exacerbating residents and business owners’ worries about deportation proceedings happening in the area, racial profiling and other related challenges.
“I want to make sure that the city of San Antonio is helping or advising or giving them the information they need to make the decisions and go through their next steps,” Viagran said of Brooks’ leadership and tenants.
According to District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, who represents the planned detention center area, the city is using its available legal tools to protect its residents from a system that he said “has gone off the rails and no longer complies within the boundaries of our legal justice system.”
McKee-Rodriguez said most residents being scrutinized by ICE have committed no crime because it remains legal to migrants to come to the United States and seek political asylum. He also said a failure by past presidential administrations, of both parties, to achieve comprehensive legal pathways to citizenship has helped to create the current crisis.
“ICE has gone rogue, and at the very least, we must take action to protect all San Antonians from this threat,” he added.
But like with recent conversations regarding ICE, the council’s two lone conservatives, Misty Spears and Marc Whyte, criticized the city’s attempt to counter the federal government’s actions.
Whyte and Spears said the city is wasting energy and money to try and litigate and reduce ICE’s burgeoning legal and local footprint. They also chided their council colleagues over enlarging the city’s scope of scrutiny to Brooks, where Whyte said ICE agents are merely operating office space and should be treated as proper tenants like fellow end-users at the Southeast Side community.
Jones said ICE finding operational space at Brooks could have a “chilling” effect on Brooks workers as well as neighborhood residents and businesses. Whyte responded that the city’s efforts are performative.
“This is a joke,” he said. “This has nothing to do with environmental impacts. This is all fluff and cover, and a pretext for wanting to send a certain message to people.”
