Not content to offer mere sanctuary to illegal aliens, Austin, Texas, has declared itself a “Freedom City.”
A resolution passed unanimously by the City Council restricts police questions about immigration status. If cops do broach the subject, they must state that their query need not be answered.
Austin’s neo-Miranda policy skirts, even undermines, state law that enables local law-enforcement agencies to inquire about the immigration status of anyone arrested or detained, and requires local authorities to cooperate with federal immigration agents.
Officials in Texas’s capital city proudly strut in the vanguard of resistance to the state’s anti-sanctuary statute, Senate Bill 4. While waging a costly fight in federal courts to kill the law, Austin is spending $200,000 to represent illegal aliens facing deportation.
Last week, council members traveled to a migrant camp in the border town of Tornillo.
Explaining why he and his municipal colleagues would caravan far from home to pose for photos with illegal aliens and celebrities, Mayor Steve Adler immodestly declared, “Cities around the state and around the country are looking at Austin for leadership.”
Indeed, Austin’s political hubris appears to have no limits. Living down to its “Keep It Weird” motto, the only restraint Austin City Hall seems interested in applying is against its own police force.
No word yet from state officials as to what, if anything, they intend to do about the not-so-civil rebellion in their midst.