A Familiar Face Returns, Heating Up the Sheriff’s Race in Webb County

As recently as 2007, Mr. Flores, the former Webb County sheriff, was sounding the alarm over possible spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war. That year, Mr. Flores went head to head with Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Laredo, on CNN, questioning the congressman’s loyalty to the United States and suggesting that Mr. Cuellar was more dedicated to Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, than to his own constituents.

The move angered local lawmakers and business leaders, who said Mr. Flores was using the carnage in Mexico — and specifically in Laredo’s sister city, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas — to paint the entire region as a hyperviolent war zone.

In 2008, Mr. Flores lost his bid for re-election by fewer than 50 votes out of more than 26,000 votes cast, following a primary, a runoff, a recount and a theatrical election contest in which lawyers subpoenaed voters and asked them how they had cast their ballots. The victor was the congressman’s younger brother, Martin Cuellar, a former lieutenant with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The Cuellar family’s power made the city a tough place for Mr. Flores to live, he said. He moved to Arizona and worked briefly as the police chief in San Luis, then he failed to pass that state’s peace officer licensing exams. He made his way back to Laredo, where he is now running to reclaim his old job.

Gone are the legions of support and the six-digit campaign coffers Mr. Flores had in the past. But the sound and the fury of old-school, border-style politics remain intact.

“I am a person who’s relentless, and I don’t give up easily,” Mr. Flores said. “For me to just pack up my bags and leave like a coward, it’s just not my style, so I decided to come back and fight for what I left behind.”

The Cuellar campaign says it is not worried about the November election. Mr. Flores is running as an independent in a Democratic stronghold, the result of the Webb County Democratic Party’s ruling that Mr. Flores had violated residency requirements and could not run as a Democrat. Mr. Flores said the ruling was an effort to squash the competition, and he blames the current sheriff for that.

“What is he scared of?” Mr. Flores asked.

In an affluent neighborhood next to the Laredo Country Club on a recent afternoon, Sheriff Cuellar sat under studio lights blotting his forehead while his campaign manager, Colin Strother, who also works for Henry Cuellar, coached the sheriff on how to deliver lines for a television ad.

“Again, talk about the helicopter. Talk about how it is not costing taxpayers money,” Mr. Strother said. As the camera crew finished up, the mere mention of Mr. Flores sent the mild-mannered sheriff into attack mode.

“He is such an idiot, man. And you can put that on the record,” Sheriff Cuellar said.

Sheriff Cuellar said he had had nothing to do with Mr. Flores not being able to run as a Democrat. “I don’t make the rules. Especially election rules,” he said.

Mr. Strother added that in order to be on the ballot, a candidate had to live in the county for a full year ahead of an election, and that Mr. Flores’s own interviews with the Arizona news media suggested that he had not made it back to Texas in time.

Mr. Flores’s placement on the ballot as an independent was also a matter of contention. County officials in late August granted him permission to run, but only after roughly 300 of the 861 signatures on his petition were deemed ineligible. At least 500 valid signatures are required to get on the ballot as an independent.

“I have always been a Democrat,” Mr. Flores said. “What I feel is that my party pretty much abandoned me.”

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Immigration Policy at Issue in Primary for Sheriff in Travis County, Texas

Sheriff Greg Hamilton, first elected in 2004, is coming under increasing fire from his Democratic primary challenger, John Sisson, a retired Austin Police Department lieutenant, for his use of Secure Communities. The program, administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and in place statewide, compares the fingerprints of arrested individuals to a federal database to determine whether those individuals are eligible for deportation. If a person is found to be in violation, ICE requests that a detainer be placed on the individual for 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays.

The federal government says the program is needed to ferret out violent immigrants or repeat immigration violators for deportation. But critics say that the system focuses on lower-level offenders rather than the more violent criminals. Mr. Sisson said Sheriff Hamilton grants detainers on every immigrant who is booked.

“I was appalled to see what it was doing to the Hispanic community and the immigrant community here,” Mr. Sisson said. “I felt like it was very inhumane to be lazy and not do the research and say, ‘We’ll just hold everybody for deportation and not even mess with the particulars.’ ”

Sheriff Hamilton said that he is merely following the law.

“The only one that can deport and put an immigration detainer on an individual is an ICE agent, not us,” he said. “At the Travis County Jail, we follow the law, and the law says that when an ICE detainer is put on, the law enforcement agency shall maintain that individual for 48 hours.”

From June 2009 to September 2011, Travis County submitted 80,731 fingerprint sets and removed 2,269 immigrants, including those who left voluntarily.

More than 900 were Level 3 offenders, convicted of misdemeanors that include traffic violations and drunken driving. There were 420 Level 1 offenders and 437 Level 2. Level 1 are aggravated felonies, including murder, rape, sexual abuse of a minor and drug trafficking. Level 2 offenders are convicted of any lesser felony or three misdemeanors.

Travis County’s number of removals surpasses that of Bexar County, where about 105,600 submissions were processed, resulting in the removal of 1,479 immigrants. Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, has a population of about 1,715,000, compared with Travis County’s population of 1,024,000.

But Sheriff Hamilton said deputies release immigrants if ICE agents do not take them and they are otherwise releasable on bond.

“Secure Communities identifies the individuals that are in our community that have run afoul of law enforcement,” he said. “And I think it’s very important that somebody knows who is in the community.”

But Sheriff Hamilton also cited his sensitivity toward the immigrant community, legal or otherwise, most of whom he said are in search of a better life. His wife is a naturalized citizen from Honduras, he said, and his department delivers aid to Austin’s Casa Marianella immigrant shelter.

“I have never asked a question, are they here legally or illegally,” he said. “I just want to help out.”

The winner of the May 29 Democratic primary will face Raymond Frank, a former sheriff and admitted underdog Republican candidate who identifies himself as an independent in the mold of Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Lake Jackson.

Mr. Frank has vowed to do away with the program if he is elected because it separates families. “A lot of Republicans are pretty outspoken about immigration,” he said. “And I don’t share their views at all.”

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