Texas governor, Gregg Abbott, finds himself in the middle of a lawsuit over House Bill 11, state law meant to stop cross-border crime and illegal immigration.
It seems that immigration laws in Texas are currently a source of conflict between people in office and rights groups. House Bill 11, or HB11, was signed last June and has taken effect in September. HB11 states that it is officially a felony to harbor people who are in the United States illegally. As a border security bill, HB11 is worth $310 million.
The plaintiffs in the said suit were two landlords based in San Antonio and Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of Refugee and Immigrant Center and Legal Services (RAICES). RAICES, spearheaded by Ryan, works closely with immigration officials who take undocumented immigrants from uncomfortable detention centers to its shelters. RAICES gives a home to these immigrants for one or two nights before they get flown back home to their families.
"This lawsuit is beyond frivolous and ludicrous. If this law were to be fully implemented, then I would be in jail and our work would be illegal and impossible," said Ryan in a statement, as reported by News 4 San Antonio.
State Representative Dennis Bonnen, the author of the bill, says that as long as RAICES and the two other landlords who filed the lawsuit do not bring in criminals in the United States, their work would still be legal.
"As long as they're not forcing people into prostitution, violence, forced labor, sexual assault, they're not working with those drug cartels that are doing so they don't have a thing in the world to concern themselves with," said Bonnen in the same News 4 report.
Governor Abbott said that the law would do the state, as well as the country good.
"Those are national, federal-based issues that we demand the United States federal government address and solve. Texas is doing what it can do by passing this border security plan," said Abbott after signing the bill, as reported by Daily Caller.
