{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/news-san-antonio-express-news-ice-agrees-announce-big-releases", "News: San Antonio Express News: ICE agrees to announce big releases", "2016-12-13", "2016", "2016-12", "Democrat", "House", "TX", "Lloyd Doggett", "D000399", "doggett.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "ICE agrees to announce big releases\nBy Jason Buch\nPublished December 13, 2016\nU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has agreed to give 24-hour notice before future large releases of families that will require assistance from San Antonio aid workers, according to people who attended a meeting with the agency over the weekend.\nICE has also said that the numbers of families released over the weekend of Dec. 3-4 was not unusually high; what was unusual was how many were released without travel documents.\nOn a given day, hundreds of women and children might be released from the family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes City, but the vast majority quickly board buses or airplanes, ICE officials told those at the meeting, said U.S. Rep. Lloyd\u00a0Doggett,\u00a0D-San Antonio.\nICE San Antonio Field Office Director Daniel Bible promised \u201che would take steps to make sure it wouldn\u2019t happen again\u201d and pledged to provide notice to the city and to aid groups like Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services if future releases are imminent,\u00a0Doggett\u00a0said.\n\u201cThere will be 24-hours notice to the city \u2026 and the same notice to RAICES or any group like Catholic Charities that they're expecting to care for incoming asylum seekers,\u201d he said. \u201cSecondly, they will not have anyone, barring extraordinary circumstances, that comes to the city after 9 in the evening.\u201d\nDuring the meeting, Bible said there was a miscommunication about the number of families going to the San Antonio Mennonite Church, according to ICE.\nThe number of people released that weekend \u201cwas within the average number of our recent releases\u201d the agency said. \u201cHowever, a higher percentage of family units during that weekend did not have prior travel arrangements, so ICE referred a larger than usual number of people to local nongovernmental organizations following their release from ICE custody.\u201d\nAid workers were overwhelmed Dec. 3-4 by the release of nearly 500 women and children, some of them well after midnight. Almost all were bound for other cities in the U.S. and hundreds didn\u2019t have bus or airplane tickets.\nThe Mennonite Church served as a temporary shelter, with air mattresses filling rooms and hallways, but the city deemed those unsafe conditions.\nDistrict 4 Councilman Rey Salda\u00f1a praised Bible for taking responsibility but expressed frustration with what he described as an unwillingness on ICE\u2019s part to provide details about who they\u2019d be releasing.\n\u201cThey were almost allergic to sharing information with the city,\u201d Salda\u00f1a said.\n\u201cThe folks who were responsible for this could not assure us that this would not happen again.\u201d\nHis concerns were echoed by Jonathan Ryan, RAICES\u2019s executive director.\nSalda\u00f1a said the city needs to know whether families will need treatment, how many have travel documents and, for those using the bus, how many have unconfirmed tickets, which means they\u2019re not guaranteed a seat on a bus that day.\nThe city needs that information to know whether to create additional shelter space or arrange for more police officers, Salda\u00f1a said.\n\u201cIt was worse than listening to a meteorologist,\u201d he said. \u201cI could not get a good sense if we should be preparing for a storm every single day, or if we have a willing partner who\u2019s going to let us know we need to be boarding up the windows.\u201d\nDistrict 1 Councilman Roberto Trevi\u00f1o said he came out of the meeting with a more positive outlook.\nHe said the city has designated Department of Human Services Director Melody Woosley as a point person who ICE can communicate with about future releases and that opening lines of communication with ICE was \u201cabsolutely a benefit.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/news-san-antonio-express-news-ice-agrees-announce-big-releases"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4562029391527176, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}