At the Sweet Co coffee shop in downtown Brownsville, the last city at the eastern end of the Texas border before you reach the ocean and Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket base or cross into Mexico, the vibe was chill but the mood was chilly.
Customers were as downcast as the wet weather outside on Wednesday, the day of a court hearing after contrasting legal rulings were made about a new law that will affect people in Brownsville, whether new migrants, US citizens, undocumented residents or others.
Local drag queen and activist Kween Beatrix, also known as Joe Colon-Uvalles, happened to be there, out of drag and sipping coffee. The exuberance of her shows was absent, but her defiance against encroachments on civil and human rights was as present as ever.
“My role has been to inform other drag queens about this law. Oftentimes, these are not the things normal drag queens do, but that’s just part of my commitment to the community,” she told the Guardian.
“People are going to misinterpret this law because of the constant changes both at the police level and the community level. All it takes is one bad cop and one person within law enforcement to misinterpret the law to cause havoc and harm in communities,” she added.
The new state law, known as SB4, would allow local police and judges throughout Texas to arrest and deport anyone they suspect of entering the country illegally. Consequences could include jailing them or expelling them to Mexico, or both, no matter what country they originated from – much to the chagrin of, among others, the Mexican president.
SB4 is at the center of a constitutional power struggle between Texas and the federal government, with the state’s hard-right leaders claiming there is “an invasion” of migrants tantamount to putting the state on a war footing and vying to take the power to enforce immigration law – the jurisdiction of the federal government, which is battling to stop them.
The law was frozen by an appeals court late on Tuesday night, just hours after the US supreme court had decided it could come into force while the appeals process played out, having previously been blocked last month. The judge in the appeals hearing on Wednesday has yet to rule. As one Texas county judge pointed out, even legal experts are feeling “whiplash”.
Kween B, whose TikTok bio says: “Quirky dragtivist from the 956”, the area code for that part of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) on the US-Mexico border, warned that if SB4 went ahead, no one was secure. She also lamented that when Joe Biden came to Brownsville last month, the US president only met politicians and senior law-enforcement officers, not community groups deeply involved in advocacy and aid services for migrants and asylum seekers, many of which oppose the expensive Operation Lone Star border security program of Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott.
Elsewhere in the city, Michelle Serrano, a local activist and co-director at Voces Unidas RGV, said that if SB4 goes into effect, she expects “a lot of civil rights violations”.
Migrants who have made their way to the southern border and crossed without authorization, hoping to turn themselves in to federal border patrol agents and enter the asylum system or bypass the authorities altogether will be vulnerable to arrest by local law enforcement, such as police, state troopers or Texas national guard troops. But so will any members of the public that law enforcement deems suspect.
“It’s very disordered lawmaking to focus on taking down community members. These are people who are providing resources to the rest of the community. To put them at risk and in a position where they don’t feel safe here any longer undermines the fabric of our society,” Serrano said.
She fears a “new reality” where locals are jailed and drained of their resources fighting a case even if they are citizens and especially if exercising their right to remain silent and request an attorney.
Whether and how to enforce the law, if it is given the green light again after an expected trip all the way back to the US supreme court, would involve choice. Some sheriffs and police departments are eager to take the power from the feds, others wary.
A Brownsville police department spokeswoman, Abril Luna, said that whether SB4 goes into effect or not, it would not change the department’s daily operations.
“It’s going to be enforced like any other Texas law, but at the end of the day, it comes down to officer discretion, just like an officer has the right to either give you a citation for a broken tail-light or let you off with a warning,” she told the Guardian.
Luna said the department would not create a special team designated for that specific type of enforcement.
Border patrol agents, under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, are specially trained.
Jenn Budd, a former senior border patrol agent in California turned immigration and enforcement accountability activist, is concerned.
“I would want Texans to know, regardless of the color of their skin, that this allows their local peace officers and their state peace officers to pull you over when they haven’t even seen you commit, or suspect you have committed, a crime,” Budd said, using a common term for law enforcement officials.
“In immigration law, it is not upon me to prove that you’re guilty. It is upon you to prove that you are a citizen, which can take hours,” she added.
Budd said “due process is guaranteed to persons and people, not [just]citizens” and “when you label somebody as illegal, they technically have zero rights and that is actually not what our constitution states”.
She also fears that laws like SB4 offer a multitude of powers and questions whether they would open the door to police setting up checkpoints anywhere to ask people for their documents or even ask someone who appears pregnant if they are trying to leave the state for an abortion, amid a virtual state ban.
The majority of residents in the Rio Grande Valley along the US-Mexico border are Hispanic, many bilingual, some only speaking Spanish.
Examples of what can arise from racial profiling under the guise of a law like SB4 can be found in different instances around the US. In 2019, two American citizens from Texas and California were detained by a border patrol agent because they were speaking Spanish in the checkout line at a convenience store.
Back at the Sweet Co cafe as the rain continued to keep the downtown streets quiet on Wednesday, Kween Beatrix had a warning.
“Last year, Latinos became the majority in the state of Texas for the first time,” she said. “The fact that our elected officials in Texas don’t look like Latinos is a huge red flag. If you don’t think that this law is going to come for you, then you’re kidding yourself.”
