Advocates tout ‘enhanced’ Harris County library cards, urge authorities to accept them as ID

Guillermo De La Rosa remembers a time when he could not get healthcare simply because he had no identification to show the doctors. The 38-year-old was paralyzed in an accident in 2003, but because he was not in the country legally and could not show a valid ID, De La Rosa struggled to get basic treatment. With the introduction last month of the Harris County Enhanced+ Library Card, De La Rosa hopes those days are behind him. “It’ll make things easier for us because in a lot of official places, when you show your (foreign) consular ID, you’re basically telling people you’re undocumented because you’re not showing a Texas ID,” De La Rosa said in Spanish. The Houston Police Department accepts some consular identification cards, including those issued by the consulates of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, but people from those countries may be hesitant to provide them to police out of fear of revealing their immigration status. The new Harris County library cards are intended to change that.

“Hopefully, this will help us live a little bit more peacefully, without fear that we can’t show an ID when someone asks for it,” said Guillermo’s older sister, Maria De La Rosa. Local community groups celebrated the new library cards Tuesday morning outside the Fairbanks Branch Library in northwest Houston, the latest step in an ongoing campaign to make IDs more accessible to Harris County’s most vulnerable residents. The cards are meant to help homeless people, undocumented immigrants, recently released inmates and others obtain basic services. Like a driver’s license or passport, the new photo IDs include the person’s name, date of birth, address and gender. The next step, organizers say, is to convince government agencies, businesses and nonprofits to accept the cards as a valid form of identification. The Texas Organizing Project held a demonstration in February to urge Houston police to recognize the enhanced library cards, following a successful push in San Antonio to adopt a similar initiative. “We must continue to advocate and push for our community and law enforcement departments like Houston police to accept the new, enhanced library card as a form of ID, to decrease the criminalization, mass incarceration and deportation of Black and Latino people,” said Damaris González, immigration rights director at the Texas Organizing Project at the event Tuesday.