DID ICE JUST CHILL DALLAS LANDLORDS?
Is the Trump administration using ICE agents to strong-arm landlords for information on tenants?
A recent advisory from the Arlington, Virginia-based National Apartment Association, which the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas distributed to its members, indicates as much.
“While the U.S. government originally stated that its initial focus would be the removal of non-citizens with criminal convictions, beefing up border enforcement and terminating humanitarian parole programs, enforcement activity has spread beyond those limits, due in part to increasing pressure on ICE to increase its deportation numbers,” the advisory said.
The Apartment Association of Greater Dallas counts members ranging from global investors to local landlords and covers one of ICE’s most active areas.
The Dallas trade group posted the advisory on its website late last month and then went silent, declining comment when The Real Deal asked to follow up on the broad warning.
That’s part of a pattern that’s played out on the other side of the landlord-tenant equation in Texas. The San Antonio-based nonprofit immigrant advocacy group RAICES also issued a warning but declined to say whether ICE has been pressuring Texas landlords with illegitimate requests.
“Despite agency arguments to the contrary, ICE warrants are agency directives and should not be misconstrued as having the same legal authority of judicial warrants,” RAICES spokesperson Faisal Al-Juburi said. “However, that does not minimize the coercive threat likely felt by anyone, regardless of status, who is approached by masked individuals claiming to be federal enforcement officials.”
