(Image: Democracy Now!)Hurricane Harvey has prompted at least five Texas prisons to evacuate nearly 6,000 inmates, and on Tuesday the Harris County Sheriff’s Office tweeted that their jail next to the swollen Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston had not been evacuated. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials are urging immigrants not to fear seeking help despite an anti-sanctuary law set to take effect on Friday. We get an update from criminal justice correspondent Renée Feltz.
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AMY GOODMAN: As we report on the toll from flooding after Hurricane Harvey, which has now reached so many lives, I want to turn to Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who was speaking on Tuesday when he announced the death of an officer who drowned while reporting for duty.
POLICE CHIEF ART ACEVEDO: Unfortunately, in the darkness, Sergeant Perez drove to an underpass that’s about 16-and-a-half feet, drove into the water, and he died in a flood, in a drowning-type event. … So, we couldn’t find him, and once our dive team got there, it was too treacherous to go under and look for him, so we made a decision to leave officers there waiting until the morning, because as much as we wanted to recover him last night, we could not put more officers at risk for what we knew in our hearts was going to be a recovery mission.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo. The chief has also spoken out against a new law set to take effect on Friday, in the midst of this storm, called SB 4, that lets police officers check the legal status of immigrants they detain. This is Chief Acevedo on Democracy Now! just a few weeks ago.
POLICE CHIEF ART ACEVEDO: How you enforce this law without racially profiling is beyond many of us. So, we’ll see what happens, but our folks are well trained, they’re focused, they want to keep Houston safe. And they know that going after, you know, cooks and nannies and gardeners and people that, but for their immigration status, don’t bother anybody is not in…