Letter Received from the Mayor of Houston, TX

Houston’s Mayor Bill White Should Be Replaced

The above link is to a post I wrote on March 13 in which I sent a snail mail to the Mayor of Houston, Bill White, regarding an illegal alien cop killer in Houston and the mayor's ignoring of same and passing the buck to the Federal Government.

I promised I‘d post a response if I received one. The following is the response I received yesterday, in which he passes the buck to the Federal Government:

Thank you for your letter I recently received. I appreciate your writing to me, and I understand your concern.

I agree that the borders ought to be more secure and we need to do a better job of protecting our officers. However, cities cannot be the enforcement arm of the federal government. We have neither the manpower nor the resources.

The Houston Police Department has been cited as a model for cooperation with federal authorities on immigration issues. We cooperate fully with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and participate, for example, in raids on illegal gangs and human traffickers. Everyone who is arrested and booked into Houston jails is asked about their citizenship status. We have fingerprinted thousands of suspects and checked them through federal databases, and have turned over hundreds of criminal illegal aliens to ICE for deportation. ICE and other federal authorities have full access to our jails.

In addition I have personally lobbied the last two U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security and other high federal officials to give federal agents the resources to get these people off our streets and secure our borders.

If you would like to receive periodic e-mails from my office and the City of Houston, please go to http://www.houstonx.gov/ and register with CitizensNet.

Sincerely,

Bill White
Mayor

If all the above is true, why is it that in Houston “lawmakers were considering termination of a local policy that bars police from inquiring about immigration status or acting to detain suspected illegal aliens"?

I write a letter to the Mayor accusing him of passing the buck to the Feds regarding the shooting of Officer Salter by a drug dealer living in a $40,000 home with $50,000 worth of security on that home, and the good mayor responds with a letter passing the buck to the Feds.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh!