Date: 2025-01-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00020757
US Immigration
Ed Gonzalez
Harris County, Tex., Sheriff Ed Gonzalez nominated to run ICE faces Senate confirmation hearing Thursday
Peter Burgess
Immigration Houston-area sheriff nominated to run ICE faces Senate confirmation hearing Thursday Harris County, Tex., Sheriff Ed Gonzalez in 2019. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/AP) President Biden’s nominee to run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will appear for a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, marking the first opportunity for lawmakers to question him publicly about his past criticism of the agency. Harris County, Tex., Sheriff Ed Gonzalez is scheduled to testify at 10:15 a.m. before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Gonzalez runs the third-largest sheriff’s department in the United States, based in Houston, where immigrants make up nearly 30 percent of the population. If confirmed, he would be the first Senate-approved ICE director since the Obama administration. Gonzalez is a career law enforcement officer who has distanced his sheriff’s office from civil immigration enforcement. In 2017, he withdrew his agency from a voluntary program that helps ICE find immigrants inside county jails who are accused of crimes and also eligible for deportation. To lead ICE, Biden picks sheriff who criticized Trump’s immigration policies ICE officials have long insisted that they try to arrest immigrants inside jails, in keeping with their mission to target public-safety threats. Officials say it is safer for everyone if they take custody of people in secure locations, instead of searching for them on the street. But ICE has also been criticized for detaining immigrants who were first taken into custody on traffic violations or other minor offenses, upending communities like Houston where many undocumented immigrants are raising families, working and going to school. Hundreds of county and local governments, known as “sanctuary” jurisdictions, have limited their cooperation with the agency. Gonzalez has tweeted that diverting law enforcement to pursue anyone but a public-safety threat “silences witnesses & victims” by making unauthorized immigrants afraid to report crimes. “I do not support #ICERaids that threaten to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom do not represent a threat to the U.S.,” Gonzalez said in a tweet in July 2019. “The focus should always be on clear & immediate safety threats. Not others who are not threats.” Gonzalez still works with ICE, as state law requires in Texas, turning over immigrants at ICE’s request and cooperating with criminal investigations. But the Harris County Sheriff’s Office had closer ties to ICE before he took over. The sheriff’s office piloted ICE’s Secure Communities program, which allows officials to check the fingerprints of anyone arrested for a crime to see if they are in the country illegally. Gonzalez served for 18 years in the Houston Police Department, as a civilian employee and then as a police officer, homicide investigator and hostage negotiator before retiring in 2009. He also served three terms on the Houston City Council before being elected sheriff in 2016 and reelected last year. He received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Houston Downtown and a master’s degree from the University of St. Thomas. Biden administration reins in street-level enforcement by ICE Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees ICE, has praised Gonzalez’s “distinguished career in law enforcement” and has called on the Senate to confirm him. But some Republicans have said the White House should not have nominated a leader who disavowed ICE programs. “Having him come in as the ICE director sends a clear message: We’re not enforcing immigration law,” said Tom Homan, who was acting ICE director in the Trump administration but resigned after the White House failed to move his nomination toward Senate confirmation. “He’s on record not supporting the mission of the agency he wants to direct.” Sarah Saldaña, the ICE director during President Barack Obama’s second term, when Biden was vice president, said in an interview that Gonzalez would be an “outstanding” leader because he understands community policing and would take a more narrow approach to enforcing the law. “To turn to a law enforcement figure, not a community activist or somebody else, should communicate to everyone, including advocates for immigrants, that as long as the laws are on the books, they’re certainly going to be enforced,” said Saldaña, ICE’s most recent Senate-confirmed director. “He has, in my view, that balance.” The Trump administration said anyone in the United States illegally could be a target for deportation, because they are in violation of civil immigration laws. But the Biden administration has limited immigration arrests to recent border crossers and convicted criminals who pose a threat to public safety, effectively sparing most of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States from being deported. Biden has urged Congress to pass a bill that would allow those individuals to apply for U.S. citizenship. Still, immigration detention centers have continued to fill as attempted border crossings increase, in what GOP critics say is a reaction to Biden’s more-welcoming tone. The growth in arrests has frustrated liberal Democrats who have called for the president to abolish the agency. When Biden nominated Gonzalez in April, just over 15,000 immigrants were in federal detention centers. More than 27,650 people were detained as of July 9. Gonzalez oversees the largest sheriff’s office in Texas, with approximately 5,000 employees and a $571 million annual budget. If confirmed, he would take over a federal agency with more than 20,000 employees worldwide and an $8 billion annual budget. ICE detains and deports immigrants, but also has an investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, which arrests Americans and foreign nationals alike for crimes such as human trafficking. This is a developing story. It will be updated. Image without a caption By Maria Sacchetti Maria Sacchetti covers immigration for the Washington Post, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the court system. She previously reported for the Boston Globe, where her work led to the release of several immigrants from jail. She lived for several years in Latin America and is fluent in Spanish. Twitter