The front page of Wednesday’s New York Times was properly dominated by the damage Hurricane Harvey is wreaking in Texas. But reporters Simon Romero and Miriam Jordan took advantage of the tragedy to press the paper’s amnesty agenda in “An Uneasy Time for Immigrants, And Then the Rain Began to Fall.” Hinting headline aside, the Border Patrol was not conducting routine enforcement in shelters. But the reporters let the accusation linger in the ominous tone of their story.
For the Times, the story is not so much about the danger posed of the hurricane as the imagined danger to illegal immigrants posed by the U.S. Border Patrol, even those patrol members sent in to help the relief effort. The paper spread its own fear-mongering on the fate of illegal immigrants fearing a Trump crackdown, although being in the country without authorization is a prima facie violation of the law.
This has been a harrowing year for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who have put down stakes in Houston.
Stepped-up enforcement of immigration measures put many on edge over deportations, while Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed one of the nation’s most punitive laws against cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. President Trump has amplified his harsh line on illegal immigration and renewed his promise to build a border wall.
Then came the chaos of Hurricane Harvey.
Families among Houston’s estimated 600,000 undocumented immigrants -- the largest number of any city in the United States except New York and Los Angeles, according to the Pew Research Center -- fled their homes to escape the flooding despite their anxiety over being turned away at shelters or facing hostile immigration agents.
A photo caption dutifully retained the paper’s euphemism for illegal immigrants: “A rescue operation in Houston, where severe flooding has only added to the fears of the city’s undocumented immigrants."
Even as political leaders in Houston sought to reassure residents that routine immigration enforcement would not be conducted at shelters and food banks, many people fleeing their homes expressed dismay over what they described as mixed signals coming from immigration authorities in the upheaval around Hurricane Harvey.
But that wasn’t good enough for Romero and Jordan.
The Border Patrol did not suspend operations at checkpoints in Texas on Saturday even after the storm unleashed destruction in parts of the state, drawing sharp rebukes from human rights activists who said the decision put the lives of undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families at risk.
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Officials with the Border Patrol sought to ease fears, contending that the checkpoints in Texas are set up south of areas affected by the storm, but rights groups pointed out that many people in Houston could potentially pass through the checkpoints to reunite with family members or seek refuge in Mexico.
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As many immigrants coped with the flooding of their homes, a sense of dread over state and federal immigration policies hung over shelters here in Houston and other parts of the state where people are hunkering down as rain continues to fall.
The NYT’s favorite euphemism for illegals (in its own words!) cropped up again and again.
But the biggest group hails from Latin America, and many of them are undocumented immigrants who crossed the border to fill jobs in restaurants, hotels and construction.
The Border Patrol can’t win. Even when they’re helping the rescue and relief effort, they are only frightening illegal immigrants.
Sowing confusion and fear among some people here, more than two dozen Border Patrol agents from a special operations detachment in South Texas arrived in Houston with a dozen vessels to help with the emergency relief effort. But Manuel Padilla Jr., a chief patrol agent with the agency, found it necessary to go on the local Univision news in Houston to reassure people in Spanish that the agents were here to save the lives of people endangered by the storm, not to check their documents.
For many undocumented immigrants, the sight of Border Patrol boats on their flooded streets was enough to frighten them. “Just physically and visually seeing the Border Patrol out there caused panic,” said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL Houston, an immigrant rights organization. “They thought they were coming to get them.”
Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, sought to ease some of the anxiety, reflecting Houston’s reputation as a frequently progressive, immigrant-friendly city. But Mr. Turner also stepped into the fray over a bill passed by the State Legislature in May, known as Senate Bill 4, scheduled to go into effect on Friday unless a federal judge enjoins it after several localities challenged it in court.
The Times typically emphasized fear among illegal immigrants, while ignoring the simpl rule-of-law angle.
A lack of trust among immigrants has deepened since President Trump was inaugurated in January and immigration arrests, particularly of those without criminal records, ramped up.
“The history is ICE says one thing and does another,” said Barbie Hurtado, a community organizer for RAICES, the San Antonio legal services group. “The fear is out there. People don’t want to come out and say who they are and seek help.”
Adding to the fear, Ms. Hurtado said, are reports that Mr. Trump is weighing ending an Obama administration program that has granted permission to stay and work to about 800,000 immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children.
(Indeed, story co-author Jordan tried her best to salvage Obama’s “Dreamer” policy, on the front of Monday’s National section.)
For some of the families sleeping on cots in Houston’s convention center, the signals coming from Washington, and the state capital, Austin, were clear, and alarming.
