Could be a big deal, or could just be Monday. Hard to say for sure.
A state and federal law enforcement operation targeting “criminals and illegal immigrants” in Colony Ridge took place Monday morning, according to a social media post by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is assisting U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents with the operation Abbott said he had been planning for months alongside Trump Administration “border czar” Tom Homan. The 33,000 acre majority-Latino residential development in Liberty County was at the forefront of anti-immigration rhetoric from Abbott and other state officials for much of the 2024 election season.
“Colony Ridge is being targeted today,” Abbott wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Texas DPS Troopers & Special Agents are assisting Homeland Security Investigations, with an operation in Colony Ridge this morning.”
Houston Landing reporters at the development on Monday observed several traffic stops by state troopers and at least a dozen DPS and unmarked law enforcement vehicles patrolling the area. No officials identifying themselves as federal immigration enforcement agents were spotted.
Sgt. Eric Burse, a public information officer with DPS, downplayed Monday’s operation, saying it was par for the course for the agency’s operations for the last two years in Colony Ridge, which began after local law enforcement raised concerns that the rate of the development’s population growth was outstripping its resources.
The agency can not and will not conduct immigration raids, Burse added.
“We’ve been here for two years. It’s nothing new for what we’re doing,” Burse said. “All of a sudden you get a tweet, and it just blows up.”
Burse directed further questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has not responded to a request for comment.
Abbott wrote in a later tweet that the operation began “hours” before his first post announcing it shortly after 10 a.m.
Liberty County leaders were unaware of the operation prior to Abbott’s tweet, County Judge Jay Knight said Monday. Knight added that he was unaware of any local law enforcement assisting with immigration raids.
“Would’ve been nice if the government let us know,” Knight said. “I wasn’t informed about anything. It’s news to me.”
Captain David Meyers, public information officer with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed Monday that the agency was not participating in the operation. He said “higher ups” with the agency were given a courtesy call in recent days to inform them of the plans.
See here for my previous post and here for all previous Colony Ridge blogging. There are real issues with how the place was developed and marketed, which are playing out in federal court, but the disconnect between the frothing lunatics in Austin and the local government in very Republican Liberty County is kind of breathtaking. The casual disrespect of not giving Liberty County leaders a courtesy heads-up is the sort of stunt I’d expect Abbott to pull on a Democratic county.
The Chron adds on.
A Department of Public Safety sergeant, however, said the agency was working the same operation that it has been for two years, focused on traffic violations and backing up local law enforcement. He said troopers in the area were not corralling people who might be in the country without authorization.
“We’re running a task force out here, just like we’ve been doing for two years now,” said Sgt. Erik Burse, of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “I guess the governor put out a tweet or something. It’s the same thing we’ve been doing.”
Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL — Familias, Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha (families, immigrants and students in the fight) — said in the hour and a half that they have been in the Colony Ridge community, there has been a noticeable increase in police activity.
“Just as we got here, we saw well over a dozen traffic stops,” Espinosa said of the area in front of Cottonwood Elementary. “If you have the experience we do, you know that 12 stops in about an hour is not normal.”
Espinosa said he was also pulled over.
“A DPS officer followed us for about 10 minutes, then they lit us up,” Espinosa said. “We obviously pulled over. He said the reason for pulling us over is that we didn’t have a front license plate. We did in fact have a front license plate. I feel like it was literally driving while brown.”
Deputies are stopping cars for traffic violations and keeping an eye on criminal activity, Burse said. If they encounter anything immigration-related, they turn that over to federal authorities.
He said he couldn’t give specific numbers on how many deputies were part of the task force, but said that you could count the number on both hands. State troopers could be seen in the neighborhood around noon.
Espinosa said the and other FIEL members were in the area to make sure residents knew their rights.
“They need to know that is ICE comes to the door, they should not open it unless they have specifically say who they are asking for,” Espinosa said. “Unfortunately, what’s going to happen in the next several days, you are going to start seeing these neighborhoods turning into ghost towns.”
Note the slightly different version of the DPS spokesguy’s quote, though the basic meaning is the same. Taken at his word, this is nothing out of the ordinary despite what the armchair warriors would like you to believe. That said, this still has real effects on real people, all in the service of a fever dream. The Trib has more.
UPDATE: From the Houston Landing:
At least 118 people were arrested during an immigration operation in Monday in Colony Ridge, according to a social media post by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Representatives for ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which all participated in Monday’s enforcement operation about 40 miles northeast of Houston, did not respond to repeated requests for additional information about the arrests.
[…]
Liberty County Sheriff Office’s chief deputy, Billy Knox, told Houston Landing that only two individuals were booked in that county’s jail on Monday. One was brought in on immigration-related charges by DPS and the other, a murder suspect, was arrested in the development and is being held in lieu of $5 million bail.
“It’s just ironic that he was arrested when (DPS and ICE) were doing the operation in there yesterday,” Knox said.
In addition, federal agents arrested Florentin Chevez-Luna in Colony Ridge on a previous arrest warrant for sexually abusing a minor. The agency released a statement Monday saying the 39-year-old previously had been deported.
The chief deputy said the county jail only holds 285 inmates and as of Monday there were only 15 beds available.
“We would not have been able to hold ‘em,” he said.
Representatives for immigration nonprofit Familias Immigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha (FIEL) said the organization was contacted by at least six families looking for loved ones arrested on Monday.
Five of the families told FIEL their family members were arrested during traffic stops by police, but when they looked for them at the county jail, they were not booked there.
“It’s terrifying for the family to arrive home and know that your family members, your loved ones, were arrested,” Alain Cisneros, FIEL’s campaign coordinator, said in Spanish. “Not being able to find them, and having to ask and beg authorities to tell you where your family is.”
So who the hell knows what actually happened. I’ll bet it wasn’t a bunch of actual criminals. The Trib and the Chron have more.
That was typical of the 1950s for Americans who looked Mexican. Roadblocks stopped everyone. Sometimes, they would claim they were looking for someone, but usually, they didn’t bother lying.
They were doing it well in Houston into the now, especially for those in the Black community.
Driving while Mexican.