As a recent Blasting News article about Texas Governor Greg Abbott's crackdown on the state's sanctuary cities reported, law enforcement is said to be divided about enforcing such a crackdown to detain, arrest, and deport immigrants because much of the new law being passed means they can go after anyone they believe is undocumented. The effort is largely seen as Greg Abbott's version of President Trump's national crackdown which is currently stalled in Congress. Abbott's Senate Bill 4 (SB4) is set to go into affect in September.
Monetary threat
Foreign Policy Magazine reported in an article titled, "Texas cities caught in the crossfire of sanctuary fight" that according to Lee Kleinman who is a member of the Dallas City Council, their open-arms policy has attracted major companies such as Toyota and Boeing and that SB4 could force many of those businesses to boycott the city.
Blasting News looked at a similar issue with Texas regarding the controversial transgender bathroom bill which Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick vowed to pass during a special session. The article points to the House Speaker refusing to pass the bill because they too feared a boycott from businesses as it already happened in the state of North Carolina for attempting to pass a similar law. In such a situation, threats to the state's economy is difficult to argue with and is used as a way to gain leverage on an opponent.
Business boycott and sanctuary city label
Such is the case with the Trump administration as they have threatened to strip sanctuary cities of federal funding if they don't turn over undocumented immigrants.
Gov. Abbott's SB4 has also threatened funding to so called "sanctuary cities" as part of the crackdown.
But as the Blasting News article also points out, boycotts by businesses might not be enough to get Texas lawmakers to reverse their legislating on controversial bills. Should businesses boycott SB4 then it's likely that the Republican-led government won't be concerned.
At the same time, Lee Kleinman seems to want to down play the position Dallas sees itself in to prevent the aggression from Gov. Abbott by saying that they do not have an interest in technically being declared a sanctuary city.
At the same time, the Foreign Policy article also says that major cities in Texas don't identify themselves as sanctuary cities.
It's possible that the label won't make any difference under Abbott's crackdown whether a Texas city identifies itself as a sanctuary for immigrants or not, as Abbott will crackdown on anyone who doesn't follow his orders.
