Rental ban may divide a town on immigration

For months, a fierce debate over an ordinance that would prohibit landlords from renting to most illegal immigrants has consumed this quiet and otherwise unremarkable north Dallas suburb.

The controversy peaked eight days ago when Farmers Branch residents became the first in the nation to approve such a measure -- by 68% to 32% in a strong turnout. Similar apartment rental bans adopted elsewhere were decided by city officials, not voters.

The American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to block the ordinance but -- barring a last-minute restraining order -- enforcement will begin Tuesday, said City Councilman Tim O’Hare.

“The problems associated with illegal immigration are out of control,” said O’Hare, the lead proponent of the measure. “This is a very pro-American vote and a pro-American town.”

At tired-looking apartment complexes along Josey Lane, in a largely Latino section of town, residents wondered whether the measure would worsen anti-immigrant sentiment.

“People work in jobs no one else wants. Now they are kicked out where they live. It’s mean,” said Blanca Benitez, a renter. She has lived legally in Farmers Branch for three years, she said, but now feels uncomfortable and unwanted in stores and other public places around town. “How would it make you feel?” she said.

The new regulation requires apartment managers to verify before renting that the prospective tenants are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. Violators face fines of up to $500. Exceptions will be made for renters who signed a lease before May 22 and certain families in which the head of household or that person’s spouse is in the U.S. legally.

“We welcome anyone to Farmers Branch that has a legal right to be in the country. But if you’re not, you’re not welcome here,” O’Hare said.

In 1970, more than 90% of residents were white. In 2000, the latest year for which census data were available, 78% of its 27,000 residents were white; 37% residents were white or nonwhite Latinos. Support for the ordinance signals frustration with federal enforcement of immigration laws, resident Lee Ann Franklin said.

“People say they come here for the American dream, but I don’t think that’s true,” she said. “I don’t think making money here to send to their families, not learning English, and expecting signs and everything to be in Spanish, is a way to assimilate.”

Dozens of other communities have passed or considered similar apartment bans, ACLU attorney Omar Jadwat said.

A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a similar law in Hazleton, Pa. -- the first city in the country to propose fining landlords for renting to illegal immigrants -- is before a federal judge.

Such laws “attempt to usurp the federal government as the entity that’s supposed to regulate immigration in this country,” Jadwat said.

“You can’t have Farmers Branch making up its mind one way, and the next town making up a slightly different way, until we have 30,000, 40,000 different immigration policies,” he said.

Last week, the controversy that has defined this town for months seemed far removed from daily life.

Children played in leafy neighborhoods of modest wood-frame houses or large, aging ranch homes. Golfers sneaked in a midweek game. Early dinner lines formed in fast-food drive-through lanes.

Rick Brown, 53, was watering a flower garden in his frontyard. Brown said he voted for the ordinance, because “if you live here, you should be here legally.”

He, like others, complained that tax dollars that should be spent on legal residents were instead diverted to the healthcare and education of illegal immigrants. Still, “I don’t think anything will change here at all,” because the city lacks the money and staffing to enforce the regulation, he said.

O’Hare said city code enforcement officers would make sure that landlords at the 15 or so apartment complexes here complied with the new ordinance.

A few miles away, a sign urging a vote against the ordinance still stood in Juana Rodriguez’s neat lawn.

Some people she knows, here illegally, are planning to move so they “don’t get in trouble,” she said.

Those in Farmers Branch legally will stay on principle, she said, in spite of what she and her friends think is an unspoken message for all Latinos to “get out of town.”

“It made me sad that it passed, because this is a nice place to live,” she said.

Rodriguez amended that. “It was a nice place to live. I don’t know what it will be like now.”

lianne.hart@latimes.com