It is about one hour. As i said yesterday, it is always good to be a will is a matter president. I am just waiting to be able to do that at the white house to president. Say madam i am just waiting to be able to say that at the white house. Andpe you have your buttons will wear them for us to spread the word not only about this very bad legislation but , also arming ourselves with the information we need to unite ourselves to fighting legislation like this anywhere in any state in any city anywhere in this country. , because only working together will we be able to stop this kind of scapegoating and rhetoric. So today, we are going to focus again on the racial profiling bill thats what i call it. Others call it the show me your papers bill but it does not , matter what we call it because we know what it is. It is targeting our communities. So whether it is like what started in california under pete wilson with their proposition or whether its the arizona sb1070 or it is ours sb4, it is bad. , call it what you want, but it is bad. So for me i have mentioned to , you in the opening remarks that we made at the beginning of this conference on thursday that the one thing we have already seen in houston has been the drop in reporting of crimes. Remember what i said, already our police chief has frowned that reporting of rape among hispanics is down 42. 8 . The reporting of Violent Crimes is down by 13 . And that is just out of the fear of what the president is doing nationally and knowing that sb4 may come, because it does not take effect until september unless we stop it and thats what we will focus on today. On your program, you saw that dina morales was supposed to be here from ma ldive. Maldive has always been there. Maldive will be there again and she is preparing for litigation. The hearing is on monday and i plan to be there and a lot of my colleagues from texas will also. In her place is Selena Moreno , speaking on behalf of maldive, and we know that texas is not alone. Arizona has been through this. We have a former senator who, at the time, well talk about the arizona experience. We have the state senator from california who will talk about their experience. And then we have experts to talk about this from the professor to a litigator so you will see that our panel will look at different perspectives to make sure we all understand exactly what we are facing and how you might see it in your own community and how to fight back. Leading the conversation is the professor from texas and victory is a contributor to msnbc, pbs, and cnn as well as a regular political analyst for porto del mundo. She is a fellow at the center for politics and governance of the lbj school of public affairs. She has been named some debts named one of the top 12 scholars in the country. This panel will be ready to go. You all make sure you have questions ready in case we have time. We will try to make sure we allow for a little bit about that. Please remember, this will impact all of us. I always say that it may start with that traffic stop because you dont have a taillight. But it could lead to a detainment and ultimate deportation that will lead to a broken family. And all of that will lead to broken faith in our system on the part of our community. Lets all work together, lets listen, lets get ready and above everything else, lets unite and fight back. Professor . [applause] thank you, senator garcia, and thank you all for being here today. Professionally, i have been looking at the issue of immigration for well over a decade. But for most of us in this room, immigration is not just another policy issue. It is something deeply personal. Usis something that affects in terms of our children, our grandparents and siblings. You add onto that what has happened in the last couple of years of immigration policy becoming even more personal, even more localized. When we look at the arizona sb 4, this isexass sb not something that happened beyond us. Its something that happens in our community. In this panel, we are going to take a deep dive into what these laws mean and what these laws mean for us on a day to day basis, how we live our lives, what decisions we make in terms of whether or not we will run an errand or not because we are scared we might get pulled over and second, what are the political implications . What is the long game here . Where are we going to be as a community as latinos . In two years, five years, in 10 years as a result of these laws . Im a teacher and so i cannot help but give a lecture when i have a microphone. I will take two minutes of your time because i think its really important to understand the larger context of the history of immigration and immigration policy in this country. The country is 250 years old and we need to understand what is happening now in texas in particular factors into that. Its interesting but for the first 100 years of this country, we had a completely open armed policy when it came to immigration. But then, in the late 1800s, we started to see that policy start to construct. What we call the closing door of immigration and i think this is an important thing for us to remember. 1882. It was when the u. S. Congress passed the chinese exclusion act. What happened there is a set of precedence in our country looking to exclude persons based on their race and their ethnicity. And the door to immigration has been closing their persons, but more particularly, it has always been closing ever since, but more particularly, it has always been targeted toward one group or another. I joke in a sense that latinos cannot take it personally because, at one time or another, the ancestors of nearly all americans were targets. Italians, jewish, irish, now its latinos. The other important thing we need to keep in mind when we are talking about immigration is that it is a federal level issue. Squarely something that should be in the purview of washington, d. C. As we all know here, our immigration system has been broken for a long time and limping along. What has happened then is that our states have taken up the baton and tried to figure out for better or for worse what to do about immigration. In the mid1990s, we saw california take its first stab at trying to deal with issues related to immigration. There was a law and in 2010, we saw a number of states spearheaded by arizona put into place restrictionist immigration laws. Today, we see texas doing the same. Understanding that yes, this is happening on the local level but it is part of a much bigger constellation of federal level laws that have not worked for us and while we work to change what is going on in our local levels, we cannot move our from what is going on in d. C. . Onour eye from what is going in d. C. With that, i will turn it over to our expert panel which we are lucky to have this morning. Let me briefly introduce each of them and then we will start the conversation. To my immediate left is texas state representative who is the chair of the mexicanamerican n legal caucus and former naleo chair. His dallas district is just a little bit off of where we stand today. Have mr. Gonzales a , partner at law firm focusing on issues related to immigration at the local level and also a former senior counsel for civil rights in the Obama Administration. Ajardo andave steve gu last but not least, california state senator, if we can welcome them all with a round of applause please. [applause] let me start with representative achia. You have been in the trenches so if you can give us a sense of the genesis of sb4 beginning with the legislative session in january and how it moves through the Texas Legislature to end up being signed by Governor Greg Abbott recently. Thank you for the question. If i can contextualize it for everybody, at the outset of the session in the Governors State of the state speech, he declared sanctuary cities and emergency item. That and ensure that the bill is going to speed through the process, receive preferable preference in terms of treatment over other bills and thats exactly what happened. Mexicanamerican legislative caucus and many of my colleagues are here today. They worked really hard to slow down the bill, appeal to the speaker of the house that this bill would get out of control on the house side which it ultimately did but the wheels of the legislative process were greased for this bill. It spent very little time in procedural committees and despite the fact that in the committee hearing, there were over 600 people who testified against the bill and less than 10 people who testified in favor of the bill, it was shot out of committee and to the house floor very quickly. The Senate Passed a papers and theill in the house house included provisions that only would trigger the asking of citizenship status or lawful presence if there was an arrest. Which in our view, minimized the impact its still a bad bill was still bad, but it minimized the damage to our community, which was the goal of many of us. We said if something is going to pass, we want it to impact as few people as possible , regardless of what the motivations which i think were impermissible and unlawful. We warned the speaker of the house, every member of the mexicanamerican caucus, who is a Committee Chair sent a letter please do not to bring this to the floor. An immigration bill on the texas house floor in this Political Climate where you have a precedent who calls latinos rapists and criminals will get out of control. That was represented to us that his Leadership Team would hold and not get out of control but in fact, the minute it hit the house floor, the bill was attacked from the right to make it papers please again and the members, the gop members of the house, headed for the hills on ultimately voted for the most egregious form of the bill possible. Once that occurred, the senate which had passed that egregious form concurred with the house and went straight to the governor who bragged that he was getting his signing ready to go. There was going to be a Massive Action against the governor at the Governors Mansion that day he was slated to sign it, so he signed it on a sunday night in private via Facebook Live as opposed to standing in front of the media, standing in front of members of the public and thats really how this thing went. There was a lot of intrigue and context i could give you, but i do not want it to be inside baseball. The governor declared as an emergency item despite the fact that virtually 100 of ice detainers are complied with in texas, i am not speaking as to whether that is good or bad but showed 99. 78 id of ice detainers are complied with so it was clearly not an emergency. What it was was an attempt by the governor and numbers of the legislature to put a brown face on an item and use impermissible use of brace to push a politically motivated agenda. When the governor and his state of the state pointed to the most important case you could show, he pointed to a latino immigrant, an undocumented immigrant, who had murdered a woman in texas and said this is exhibit a for why we need this. In fact, that exhibit a had been in ice custody three times and deported three times and because of our broken immigration system murdered someone. The sanctuary cities would not have stopped that case yet it was Willie Hortonesque. For those of you too young to remember, Willie Horton was a black man used as a political pawn to attack someone. This bill was built on a foundation of lies and racist pretext and i think thats what made it most egregious in a state that is 40 latino. Its very important to highlight just how much effort was put into trying to stop sb4 first in the senate. I know the house was putting forward every effort they could but as we said, the larger political context, not just here in texas but nationally, was just too much of a wave to fight against. This is where i think we moved to a different strategy in this is the legal strategy. Once we saw the writing on the wall and knew this was going to pass by Governor Abbott, we knew it was a foregone conclusion that this was going to be fought in the court. Selena, if you can talk to us about the Court Challenge brought almost immediately and how you see that challenge in the short to mediumterm playing out. First of all, thank you to the chairman and everybody in the legislature. Our allies and over 1000 people came out to speak against sb4. We came up short but we are taking the fight now on monday to federal court in san antonio to block the law before it ever takes effect on september 1. We are proud to represent san bexar county, and san antonio city councilman and three amazing organizational plaintiffs. Along with our other plaintiffs, we will go to court to tell the judge that this will have irreparable harm in our community, to the jurisdiction s in the state of texas and this law is unconstitutional and it cannot stand. The chairman mentioned the way the governor signed the bill into law. The very next day, the governor actually took a playbook a page out of the book of governor pete wilson in california but he did not finish reading it until the end because when prop 187 was passed in california, governor wilson, as governor as did,d Governor Abbott both governors were trying to intimidate our community from standing up in court against this bill. I know that we draw tremendous strength and inspiration from our clients, particularly those that are most vulnerable. They are certainly not intimidated and neither are we and we look forward to the courtroom fight on monday where nina perales will be presenting oral arguments and live witnesses for the court on monday. Thats a good excuse for why nina is not here. [laughter] we will let it slide. Sheriff, as a lawenforcement officer, you are on the ground, you are seeing firsthand the effect of a law like sb4 where the rubber meets the road. Can you talk to us about what you have seen, and the justification was that sb4 was not antilatino or antiimmigrant but it was about Public Safety and about making texas safer. Are we safer . Are we not safer . In my opinion, this law will make us less safe. I represent Harris County which is primarily in the greater houston area. Its the Third Largest in the country and the largest here the state. As a lawenforcement officer, to me, its imperative we work with all communities, especially the immigrant community to make sure we are getting information, to make sure we are solving crimes, Violent Crimes and also making sure they come forward to report and there is a trust factor there and this diminishes that. Thats what i try to advocate at the state level with our allies. Our voices were ignored by the governor, in my opinion and those that passed this law. I think its important for them to understand that in our Diverse Community, there is already a sense of fear to begin with. There is already an underreporting of case of family violence, Sexual Assault and this just makes it worse. We have heard anecdotally or where some individuals, some women have said i should never have called out my husband because now he may get deported even though he is beating me. We have heard cases like that. Say wheneard children mommy or daddy are late picking them up from school, they say, they are worried that their parents have been deported. I am grateful for the the Law Enforcement specialists like those who understand the verse diverse communities, who have stood up and advocated against this, but those voices were not heard. We need many people to feel comfortable and come forward and they cant when we have this kind of law. Thats why i have been an office in this role since january and soon after taking office, i ended the 287g in my community [applause] because i knew this type of law , again, brings negative connotations and there is a fear thats associated with it. Instead of is going forward, were going backward. I think its very offensive as an elected official, i can run the risk of being arrested and removed from office by not complying with this. I was elected by the people to serve and represent and determine what are the priorities. [applause] what the Law Enforcement priorities should be for my jurisdiction. I am on the ground i know whats happening what happens to local control. I was elected to represent local constituents and we should be addressing Violent Crime to me. This type of law with people being in fear hurts everyone because if there is a latino that was a witness to a crime, now they will be afraid to come forward and report those crimes. Hence, i am unable to go after the perpetrator or the Latino Community could be targeted because those predators will know that they will not come forward because they will be afraid. It also could lead to racial profiling because now with any lawful stop, they could be subject to immigration. If we want to be immigration officers, we would have signed up to work and immigration. [applause] again, its very unfortunate and texas is ground zero right now. Thank you, sheriff. Gabriel, you come at this issue from a very eclectic background. Youre in d. C. With the Obama Administration in the Civil Rights Division of the Education Department but back in the 1990s, you were in the trenches with malda in the stop 187 and now youre working with local communities to figure out how to best address the fear that has consumed our community at the national and local level. If you can talk to me about the most effective education policy approaches for policymakers in this room to take back with them when they are talking to their constituents or their Community Members about the fears they have about immigration. Sure, im a partner at law firm in california that represents the majority of School Districts and Community Colleges and after the election of president trump, we had a lot of questions and concerns that were related to h