Feds Will Not Peform Immigration Checks During Hurricane Evacuations in Texas

McALLEN, Texas – The U.S. Homeland Security director clarified that federal border agents would not impede a hurricane evacuation from south Texas by checking fleeing residents' documents, a revision of plans confirmed by Border Patrol officials in the state only days earlier.

Speaking at a hurricane preparedness gathering Tuesday at FEMA headquarters in Washington, Secretary Michael Chertoff said he wanted to "drive a stake through the heart of a misapprehension which is out there."

"In the event of an emergency, and the need for an evacuation, priority No. 1 ... is the safe evacuation of people who are leaving the danger zone," Chertoff said. "Instructions to the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection are clear. They are to do nothing to impede a safe and speedy evacuation of a danger zone."

Texas officials reacted with concern when patrol officials along the Texas-Mexico line said last week that checkpoints 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of the border would remain in operation during a hurricane evacuation. Officials also had said agents would make checks at evacuation hubs where fleeing residents lacking transportation would board buses.

Local emergency management officials feared the checkpoints could become bottlenecks for traffic fleeing the coast and the low-lying Rio Grande Valley, and could dissuade illegal immigrants and legal residents with undocumented family members from heading to safety.

"Now, obviously the laws don't get suspended, but it does mean that our priorities are to make sure we can move traffic along quickly," Chertoff said. "We're not going to be bogging people down with checks or doing things to delay the rapid movement of people out of the zone of danger."

Krista Piferrer, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, termed the idea of operating the checkpoints in a hurricane "nonsensical" and said the state was pleased to be back on the same page with the federal government.