Why Is ICE Arresting So Many People Without Criminal Records In Weird, Liberal Austin?

On the morning of February 9, Juan Martinez got into his car just outside his apartment and prepared to drop off his children at school before heading to his construction job. Then, before his kids came downstairs, immigration agents approached him and asked him for his papers. He’d feared this confrontation for years but managed to avoid it. He figured as long as he paid his taxes and was a good father he could remain under the radar.

 

His children watched in horror from their upstairs apartment window as their father was thrust to the ground, handcuffed, and eventually taken away to the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall, a facility between two to three hours away depending on traffic. In a few moments, a life was shattered and a family of seven torn apart.

 

This happened not in a highly-patrolled border town, but in Austin—one of the most liberal cities in the country, proudly weird and a hotspot of progressive activism, a place where a sheriff has adopted sanctuary policies at her jail in defiance of the governor.

 

The Montopolis neighborhood, where Martinez and his family have lived for five years, is virtually untainted by the gentrification that has pushed many minorities out of East Austin. It remains just out of reach of the trendy restaurants, food trucks, and boutiques that began taking over in the early 2000s. The land is flat and fertile, and despite urban development, tall prairie grass still springs up, reminding residents and passersby of its rural past. Despite Austin’s penchant for tacos and margaritas, Montopolis, which the Austin Chronicle once called “poverty island,” is the last predominantly Hispanic community in Austin where most residents are blue-collar workers who speak Spanish at home.