Immigration activists demonstrated outside the Texas state Capitol in Austin on Saturday over a controversial new law that could be implemented in a matter of days.
Hundreds of people from across the state rallied to oppose Senate Bill 4, which would, among other provisions, allow police to detain anyone they think may have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
Campaigners have argued that the law could lead to abuses of power and allow law enforcement officers to target ethnic minorities.
“Forty percent of the population in this state is Latino, Mexicano,” Jessie Fuentes, of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, one of the organizing groups, told the march, according to local news channel KEYE. “It’s our people.”
“I think people overall in the border region—possibly throughout the whole Texas border region—need to be aware of what this law really is, what the power that is going to give officers, and most importantly to know that they have rights,” Alan Lizarraga, communications coordinator for Border Network for Human Rights, another organizer, told KFOX.
Proponents of the law say it is needed to help address an influx of illegal immigration across the border and deter associated crimes, including the trafficking of drugs. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, there were nearly 2.5 million encounters with migrants at the border in the year ending in September, 1.5 million of which occurred along the Texas part of the border.
