Mexican Consul meets with Jackson leaders

Officials from the City of Jackson met with representatives from the Mexican Consul in Little Rock, Ark., last week.

The Consul has three offices that deal with the southeastern United States and Tennessee – Little Rock, Atlanta and New Orleans.

West Tennessee is in Little Rock’s area of coverage.

The Consul is present in the United States to help any Mexican resident if they’re without their documentation for some reason and need it restored.

The Consul – Carlos I. Giralt Cabrales – and a few of his assistants typically make visits to Memphis but no one from the office has been to Jackson since before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

In addition to some of Mayor Scott Conger’s leadership staff, the Consul met with the leadership at Jackson Police Department’s Chief Thom Corley and some of his leadership team.

“Their visit was educational for me, but they provide documents like passports to citizens of Mexico who may be here, have lost their passport or it’s come up missing somehow,” Corley said.

Corley said they also discussed a change in state law that took effect on Monday, July 1, regarding undocumented immigrants.

The state law simply changed a verb in the law about undocumented immigrants that are taken into custody.

“The law previously said law enforcement ‘are authorized’ to cooperate with federal immigration officials when we encounter undocumented immigrants,” Corley said. “But the law changed ‘are authorized to cooperate with’ to ‘shall cooperate with.’

“That means there’s more of an expectation of us to cooperate with federal immigration than there was before the law was passed. And we just talked with the Consul about what that means and what it looks like.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news