ABC-7 Xtra: Municipal Identification Cards

>> good evening, welcome to abc-7, i’m maria garcia. we’ve been keeping you updated on a big push for an el paso municipal i.d. program. it’s become significantly controversial in other cities as we’ve reported. the border network for human rights in january turned in a petion to the city with more than 10,000 signatures requesting the city issue municipal i.d.s. supporters say municipal i.d.s can help those who have a hard time obtaining i.d. like the homeless and undocumented immigrants. there are three major areas of concern here, the feasibility, risks and possible costs for i.d. the city determined if the municipal i.d. program was offered here it would require a $50 fee per ka toward avoid using taxpayer dollars. joing us tonight, robert heyman with the border network for human rights and adolpho telles, chair of the local republican party. you can email your comments and questions now to abc7xtra@kvia.com or reach us by phone at 915-496-1775, on twitter tweet me at @mariagabc7. before our discussion let’s look at more details from the study. here’s a report filed by our darren hunt. >> i think that figure is a little bit high. >> robert heyman isle policy coordinator for the border network for human rights, which estimates there are fro utter to 66,000 people in el paso without i.d. the group showed up at a council meeting earlier this year with 10,000 signatures asking the city to create a municipal i.d. program. >> there is a very fundamental need that as a community we need to figure out how we can meet. >> the study found a municipal i.d. would not increase access to most services identified by proponents. it could risk el paso being identified as a sanctuary city making it vulnerable to legislative sanctions. >> there’s been some discussion of figuring out how to amortize the up-front costs over a three- or five-year period to bring down sort of the up-front hurdle. >> the real crux of the white paper i think has hit on the first issue of acceptance and feasibility. the first sentence is the municipal i.d. would not increase access to most services. there’s no absolute reason for it. >> bob pena is administrator for the el paso republican party. he says it’s not worth of risk of losing founding if el paso is identified as a sanctuary city. >> these are major hurdles that would immediately notify or city council that this is not a good idea. >> and joining us now is robert heyman with the border network for human rights, and adolpho telles of the local republican party. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> robert, i want to start with you. the study really doesn’t do well for the cause that the border network for human rights has been championing over the last year. it really contradicts the crux of your argument by saying municipal i.d.s in el paso would not really increase access to essential services. >> well, i have a couple of things to say on that. first of all, it’s notable that the page and a half introduction of the study talks about risks, it talks about an alleged lack of feasibility and talks about costs but doesn’t talk about any benefits. this is something that has been used in other cities to allow people to feel comfortable interacting with police. so they actually call police to report emergencies. it’s been used to help people get access to bank accounts so they don’t have to rely on check cashers and payday lenders. >> it helps to go pick up a sick child from school. and none of that’s mentioned in that executive summary or in that white paper. i think that tells us something about how the white paper was put together. i think this is really an unbalanced piece of work coming out of the city. and i mean, to get to that issue of feasibility, you know, what we’ve been hearing is we’ve had discussions, members of our coalition, a very broad coalition pushing for this, as we’ve had discussions with people of the city, one of the things they did is that they sent a letter to various institutions, officials, asking them a series of fairly technical legal questions about whether they would accept these municipal issue identification cards. they didn’t do much in the way of follow-up. they didn’t give it much time for people to get those turned around. and then they interpreted a lack of response as people not being willing to accept them. >> okay. >> for one example, they sent one of these letters to the sheriff. sheriff wiles has been on the record publicly for months saying the sheriff’s office would accept these i.d.s when they encounter people — >> so why not go to the county then and ask them to pay it for or ask them to do it? >> well, we are working with county. we’re working with a broad coalition and working with commissioner — >> so why not turn in the petion you turned in to city council to the county? >> well, there’s wunnicke limitation on the county’s ability to do this. the county has the authority under the texas constitution to issue an i.d. they don’t have authority under the texas constitution to create a new fee. >> okay. >> so the penalty under home rule — >> okay. >> we’re looking to bring the county, the city of el paso, bring the outlying municipals and institutions to the table. and rather than come up with reasons why this can’t move forward, figure out what it would take to have a program that would work with el paso residents. >> that’s sort of the foundation here, his first point is the justification for this municipal i.d. and that’s that it would create safer communities because you would have people who could identify themselves with authorities now. wouldn’t we be safer if, regardless of immigration status, we knew exactly who was here based on a municipal i.d.? >> i do want to respond to that. i guess i want to back up a little bit. what i heard to begin with was that we had 40 to 66,000 people without i.d.es. we have done research trying to find out where that number comes from. we can’t find anything that supports that number. there are no studies that come back and tell us this is what, by city, that undocumented individuals — what the numbers are. first of all, i don’t know where that comes from. second of all, el paso is the safest city over 500,000 people in the united states. if we have people that don’t have identifications they are either illegal, because the individuals that are homeless, they are entitled to identification. if they are ex-military, it’s easy for them to get an identification. if people want to go to the department of public safety, they will get a voter i.d. card for free from that source. so it’s not like there’s not available sources already. and when it comes to safety, we are safe already. so i can’t understand and i don’t understand what the additional benefit is, other than maybe these people are going to make money off of it. i heard numbers of $800,000 to a million dollars for the initial costs. that’s a taxpayer cost. i’ve also heard there’s another 250, $300,000 a year for maintenance, that a taxpayer cost. i’ve heard numbers about the number of people that might sign up. they are talking about maybe 10,000. i think that with the discussion — that came from yourself or a discussion you had with somebody else. that’s $a thousand per person just for the front-end costs and then the annual maintenance costs. there are studies on how many of these i.d.s get renewed and the number is very, very low. >> okay. >> there are a lot of issues here that are completely unanswered. i’m not sure where the research came from. i don’t know where that number comes from. >> let’s start with that. break it down for us, the 40 to 60,000 people estimated in el paso that the border network for human rights projects need this i.d. how do you get those numbers? >> i actually think that’s on the low end. there are a couple of studies that shows the undocumented population in the county. the migration policy showed around 50,000 a couple of years ago. the center for migration studies, the report released earlier this year put it between 50 and 60,000 countywide. on top of that, about 1500 people in homeless shelters any given night, about 4,000 homeless over the course of the year. you have individuals who are transgendered and don’t feel like they are adequately identified — >> let’s start with the undocumented immigrant population. the mexican consulate here, the consul, i did an interview with him a few months ago. he says it costs $ticket to get the mexican i.d. for mexican nationals. it’s an official i.d. here in the u.s., as well. el paso police accepts it and it’s fairly accessible to get. >> the banks don’t accept it to open bank accounts. >> some banks accept it, the consul said. >> but they only accept it as a secondary form of identification. you can’t only go in with that document and open up a bank account. >> but the safety issue, the foundation here as you say, the big issue here is the safety issue, that these residents — that the el paso police take the document. >> they might take the matricula as long as the legislature lets them take it. we’re seeing the push-back consistently roll back. one of the things you’re seeing around birth certificates is that the state is cracking down on the acceptance of that document as in allowing people to get birth certificates for u.s. citizens and children. i don’t think we can rely on the matricula as an option going forward. on top of which, there are a significant population that aren’t mexican nationals that can’t get that document to begin with. >> what about the other populations? >> i want to talk about the 50 to 60,000. that’s the biggest number we’re talking about here. i go back to if those are the ones, the biggest group we’re trying to help, those people are in this country illegally. believe me, i support legal immigration. i go to the naturalization and immigration services with regulator. if those are the people we’re trying to help, those people have broken the united states federal laws. we’ve had individuals trained to help them to continue to break federal laws. we are teaching our population, particularly children, the wrong message. that if you choose which laws you want to support and which ones you want to ignore, that’s an narcotic key. >> but by all accounts and purposes, across the political spectrum, there’s concensus that the immigration system is broken. >> i agree. >> and it’s a complex system. whether you agree with it or not, 11 million people are here in the united states, they are here and they are living their lives. so there’s an argument about ensuring that while they are here, we know who they are, we can identify them. and we make it more efficient for them to communicate with police. >> and i agree with you, i think our immigration system is broken and i think we have to do something bit. but this is a completely different discussion but i’m going touch on it. i think we need to do something about it. i think these people broke the law. not the kids that the parents brought. who broke the law in the parents came over and they bring their children. i think the children clearly need to be worked with. they should be allowed to complete their education. people who broke the law, there should be a penalty. if i break the law i am penalized. >> for example, one of the uses that the matricula cannot be used is for an undocumented immigrant to get a u.s. birth certificate for their children. there are a lot of complexities that basically inhibit these undocumented immigrants at times to get basic documentation that proves their children born here in the united states are in fact their children. >> they were given birth certificates when they were born. and one of the issues — [talk. >> but you really aren’t, you don’t get a birth certificate. >> i got one. >> you don’t get a birth certificate when you’re — i don’t know if the system has changed but i had a baby last year and you don’t get a certificate in the hospital. >> wherever you put your — >> yes, it is mailed to you at a later date, that’s true. >> so you get one when you’re born. if they launched it — one of the issues that are occurring is people are trying to use these to get documentation. there’s got to be control because we’ve got people that are breaking the law and they are trying to break it again. that’s what i struggle with. >> i think there’s a fairly serious internal contradiction here that we’re asking people to come forward to identify themselves to authorities, have a document that can be used to identify them, and then that all for some idea that it’s unknowable, they are unknowable and they are out of control. you can’t have it both ways. either we need to be able to identify them and have something like a municipal i.d., so that we know who people in the community are; or we have a system where we have tens of thousands of people who we don’t know who they are. >> i know there’s a basic fundamental philosophical difference here, and the difference is the view on immigration. and i want you to respond to adolpho’s comment that you’re essentially enabling people to live here illegally, incentivizing people to come here illegally because you’re facilitating their life here illegally, when legally she shouldn’t be here. >> well f we’re certainly not insensitive, you look at the academic literature on immigration, it’s cut and dry. the main — the far and away largest driver of migration is economics. and as long as the economy of the united states is strong, something i think both myself and mr. telles would want, people are going to come here. it’s a reflection of a broken system that they come here without authorization. >> we have to take a commercial break. i know you both want to make another point. >> if i can just finish by saying one thing. these cards are not going to change anyone’s immigration status. they don’t provide any legalization, they don’t provide anything like legalization. they are not accepted as citizenship or lawful presence by the border patrol or by ice. they are a basic way for people to identify themselves while they are here. >> but it makes it easier for them to navigate their life here in the u.s. and there’s an argument that it shouldn’t be easy to live here illegally. >> same thing, they give driver’s licenses and look at the pickle they are in now. the federal government is not going to allow any mexican driver’s licenses to be used to access federal facilities and they are not going allow them to even use to get on planes. look at the impact it’s having on the citizens of that state if that comes through. >> because they have already started saying that’s what they are going to do. >> in the new mexico senate, the last legislative session, almost unanimously passed bipartisan compromise to keep in place the driver’s license system that still allows undocumented residents of new mexico access to driver’s licenses. >> i really do have to take this commercial break now. we’ll be right back, we’ll get to your comments and questions now via abc7xtra@kvia.com. also my producer telling me that we’re having some trouble with our phone lines. we’re going to try to troubleshoot that. for of calling, >> welcome back to “abc-7 xtra, i’m maria garcia. we’re talking about municipal i.d.s. good discussion here with adolpho telles, chair of the republican party and robert heyman with the border network for human rights. adolpho, when the border network for human rights turned in this petion to city council, you had 10,000 people saying look, we’re willing to pay for this. we’re not asking for a free service. if it’s going cost us $50, $100 to get this i.d., we’ll pay for it. if they are willing to incur the cost of this program, what is the issue? >> let look at the costs. first of all, there’s going to have to be a large up-front cost, the taxpayers will pay for that. then there will have to be, as was stated earlier, an am more tization of the costs over several years. that’s taxpayers. then an annual cost related to maintaing it. you’re going to have a big hit up front and smaller hits in the back for maintenance. if you’re going to give them rights to the community, people talk about the libraries and i’d like them to have rights. i think they can get that right now just with the matricula right now. if you go down the line, it is not — if they pay $50, maybe 10,000 people sign up, and the front-end cost is $800,000 to a million dollars, that’s $80 to $100. how are we recapturing that? it doesn’t work in my mind that they are paying for that, because they are not. >> you mentioned taxpayers. you were having this discussion during the commercial break. every time there’s a discussion about undocumented immigrants people refer to them as if they are not taxpayers. as robert was saying they pay sales tax. if they rent homes, they pay property taxes through their rent. so they do contribute to the local economy via taxes. >> okay. let’s go back to a basic premise. they came here, a large majority of them, as illegal immigrants. now they are making money somewhere, and they are probably using an identification or a social security number if their employer is legitimate. they are using somebody else’s i.d. number or they made one up or they are using a social security number they got from someplace. if they are not using that they are getting money under the table and they are not paying taxes as it relates to employment. so they are paying rent if the landlord chooses to rent to them. they are a taxpayer from that perspective. but they are also — their kids are going to our school systems. that’s a taxpayer cost. do you think the rent they are paying, the tax importance of that covers the cost of their education or any other services they might — including our safety. we pay — our city, our county sheriff, we’ve got a host of law enforcement that have done a great job in this community. and you look at the taxes they pay. their property taxes compared to what a normal citizen pays, taxes in general are going to be significantly less. >> you look at the most recent study, maybe it’s getting a few years old by this point, then the state comptroller, carol keaton straithorn back in 2000, documented and undocumented, were a net would many to the texas economy. they were a net positive contributory taxes at the state level, they were a net positive contributor at the federal level. and in ways that more than makes up for the shortfalls at local government. these are people who are taxpayers. they do pay sales taxes and property taxes, which are the taxes that fund or city government. there’s no reason why they should be excluded from the benefit of that government, as long as they are helping to pay to sustain it. >> we have an email. let’s be honest, the border network for human rights is the one pushing to have this done. it’s no secret they support illegal immigration. since it is a federal issue the city should not get involved in president identification cards issue. local law enforcement doesn’t enforce immigration because again, it is a federal issue. how is this issue any different? the city would be condoning and rewarding illegal behavior. who would foot the bill if the measure is passed? the law-abiding citizens of stiff el paso. >> i want to begin by saying border network for human rights supports legal immigration. we don’t encourage undocumented immigration, we don’t encourage unauthorized migration. but what we do is we want a legal system that’s robust and capable of handling the realities of migration to the united states. >> i think that’s something you can agree with him on. >> that is something i agree with you on. >> i go to the naturalization services and i’ve never seen anything from this organization there welcoming the new citizens that have done it right. if you ask them how they feel about illegals, these people that did it right say, it took me seven, eight, 10, 14 years to do this. we have other people that come in illegally and they start to get the benefits of this country and they didn’t go through the process i went through. it’s amazing to me how many people resent the illegal side of this. because they did it the right way. >> but we can’t let that resentment dictate policy, dictate what’s — in ways that aren’t going serve what’s best to this community. the other thing is going say, border network for human rights supports legal immigration but we also realize we have to deal with realities of the people who are here. these are members of our community, these are people working and living in our community. these are our neighbors, often they are our friends and family members. and we can’t just uproot them. we need to figure outweighs that we can deal with them that advance the entire communities well-being. >> okay. >> our biggest risk as a community is to be identified as a sanctuary city. i think our law enforcement have done a great job of identifying when people get arrested, if they are a potential illegally, and they report it to the feds. >> i want to talk about that. texas — >> we’re okay so far. >> greg abbot crashing down on so-called sanctuary cities, justice grants will be off limits to counties and cities who don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration law. and the city study that was just released this week says this is what el paso can risk if it issued municipal i.d.s. being identified in this category could lose el paso funding. >> we’re talking about the proposal, which at this point is still unclear. >> you have — you have — he has support in the texas legislature. i mean — >> he has support now but the legislature isn’t going to be convening for another 13 months. and the bills aren’t going to be passing for probably another 18 months. >> okay. we have to take a commercial break. we have a lot of emails and tweets to get to. you’re >> welcome back, everyone. we’re talking about municipal i.d.s tonight. let get for some of your tweets. >> i’d like to finish my comment from before. we can’t let things that may or may not happen 18 months from now in the legislative session dictate the steps that we can take with the tools we have available presently to act in the best interests of our community. we have that moral imperative to make sure that we’re serving the needs of this community with the tools we have at hand. if the legislature decides to act in a way that i think would genuinely be imprudent around some of this sanctuary city nonsense, then we’ll have to reevaluate it. but in the meantime i think we need to look at this seriously as a way of advancing the well-being of all of el paso. >> we also have a moral imperative to support the laws of this city, this county, this state and this country. and you are promoting violation of those, and you’re putting taxpayers of this community at risk obama administration this sanctuary city issue is not just a state issue, it’s a national issue. there’s going to be additional pressure that comes about as a result of it. we’ve got to decide. if you don’t like the law, get the law changed but don’t just ignore it. >> let’s talk about this. the sanctuary city maneuvers, governor abbot has been talking about, has about ton uphold policies that the federal courts are finding unconstitutional. how do we uphold the rule of law? >> the 9th circuit has ruled that ice detainers are unconstitutional. you cannot hold someone without a criminal charge. >> that is what other courts have said is okay and should be done. >> what are those courts? >> i didn’t bring those notes but i should have. >> okay. because federal courts, district courts, circuit courts, are consistently finding that these ice detainers that government abbot and lieutenant government patrick are arguing for are unconstitutional. if we want to uphold the rule of law, what is the rule of law? do we uphold an unconstitutional detention so we can have an idea of what is or is not a sanctuary city? or do we uphold a rule of law law that meets the best interests and needs of the community as it sits now. >> i think what i’m hearing is that we have a law that sis immigration that’s not legal is wrong. what i just heard you say, which just amazings me, even though it’s wrong our law enforcement should not be enforcing the law or not allowing the people that are supposed to enforce it, enforce it. if i have an accident and i commit a vehicular homicide they will put me in jail. >> yes. >> if somebody breaks the federal law of coming in here illegally they should be able to walk around free because nobody should do anything about it? >> if someone vital federal administrative code on immigration, it’s not a criminal challenge ice detainers have increasingly consistently been found as unconstitutional. we have the state asking to uphold unconstitutional practices. that’s the rule of law that you’re asking us to uphold and to turn away from something that would meet basic community needs. >> i have to get to our viewers because they want to be part of the discussion here. a lack of incollusion of benefits to municipal i.d.s in the white paper calls the document in question considering it’s worked in other cities. chairman telles is misinformed. consider how hard it is or what a hassle it is for just a regular person or when after average person loses an i.d. john is saying taxpayers should not foot the bill for this. my mom came here from mexico and got her resident i.d. legally. again, this is a municipal i.d. would have no bearing on your federal immigration status. and also from another, hearing the local gop comment on this policy issue is laughable, considering many in the gop want to repeal birthright citizenship. and then also from adrian, why should local el paso tax dollars be used to fix a federal issue, and possibly cause a loss in federal funding? and then i also want to read this email here, it sounds like an awful lot of trouble to do something that can already be done. why can someone go to the city and get an i.d. and not go to dps like everyone else? the idea is to simply to allow someone to break the law. there would be zero added safety for citizens and benefits for people who break the law. what laws can i break? i’m a citizen and no one’s coming up with ways for me to break any laws. there are some viewers who are mirroring mr. telles’ thoughts there. >> there are a couple of points on the safety considerations. first of all, when san francisco instituted their i.d. cards, they instituted a card that was more secure, it included engraving by a metro security, fingerprinting that was well above and beyond california driver’s licenses. it was harded to get, harder to forge. there have been no cases of fraud with the san francisco i.d.s. >> just one. >> that wasn’t tied to the municipal identification cards. >> it was tied to bag sanctuary city — >> and of course you’re talking about the murder in san francisco, the man who had attempted to deport him several times and he had come back. >> right. he came back. and it’s telling that he came back even with repeated multi-year sentences to federal prison for illegal reentry. that didn’t stop him from coming back. immigrants are going to be here. they are going to be in these communities. to the question we have is, do we want to know who these people are? do we want to have them be able to interact with institutions like law enforcement? or do we want them to be in the shadows where we don’t know who’s out there. so new haven, connecticut, introduced their card explicitly so that immigrants in new haven would feel comfortable reporting crimes to police. in new haven they were the victims, they were getting mugged and murdered there. >> they are counting me down i have 10 second left. thank you so much for coming, and thank you, adolpho for coming. we