Houston police officers have called federal immigration agents on civilians over 100 times since President Donald Trump took office in January — a jump of more than 1,000% from any of the previous five years, according to public records obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
The majority of those 107 calls to Immigration and Customs Enforcement came as the result of a traffic stop. In only three offense reports — for responses to domestic violence, aggravated robbery and narcotics complaints — did officers indicate that the subject had been suspected of a serious crime.
Incident reports indicate that ICE came to arrest the subject in at least one out of four cases. Those numbers could be higher, however, as many incident reports lack details about why the subject was stopped or whether ICE responded.
By comparison, Houston police called ICE nine times in 2024 — the most of any year prior to Trump’s second term in office, records show. Police officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about their cooperation with ICE.
Local immigration advocates say the department’s willingness to involve ICE in non-criminal proceedings could deter immigrants, who make up more than a quarter of the city’s residents, from reporting crimes to law enforcement. Already this summer, Houston police officers called ICE on a Salvadoran woman who reported her abusive ex-husband to police.
“The majority of these cases are non-criminal in nature,” said Zenobia Lai, executive director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative. “And that is very concerning for many reasons, one being that victims of crime or domestic violence will be very hesitant in contacting the police for help when they actually need it.”
Mayor John Whitmire has long maintained that the department will hold violent criminals accountable and assist crime victims regardless of their immigration status, and that the Houston Police Department would not get involved in immigration enforcement as Trump embarked on a nationwide crackdown.
However, he has also said that local officers are required to contact an arresting agency when they come across a person with a warrant. And after immigration authorities this year added roughly 700,000 people with administrative warrants — many of which are for outstanding deportation orders — to a national law enforcement database historically reserved for major crimes, those encounters have skyrocketed.
The question of whether local officers are legally obligated to notify federal agents about administrative warrants is a murky one. Unlike judicial warrants, which are signed by a judge, administrative warrants are issued by ICE officers and do not by themselves compel other agencies to action.
In an internal email sent to police supervisors earlier this year, Executive Chief Thomas Hardin detailed the department’s policy to call ICE when officers encounter someone with an administrative warrant. It instructs officers to check whether ICE will send an agent to the scene.
No federal law obligates local police to report subjects with an administrative warrant. While Texas has passed state laws that require law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the law doesn’t explicitly demand that officers call ICE whenever they encounter an immigrant living in the country illegally.
You’re not alone if you’re confused by all that. The story indicates that a small number of officers are responsible for a significant number of the ICE calls, including one traffic patrol officer who leads the way with eight such calls. Maybe these guys are confused, or maybe they’re just doing their own thing, regardless of what the HPD policy is. Either way, that seems like a gap that should be addressed by HPD leadership and by the Mayor, who did not give a comment on this to the Chron. He’s been doing a lot of that no-commenting thing lately.
The one bit of good news here is that this is still a small number in absolute terms. But given the atrocities that ICE is committing every damn day, we can’t let that slide. If the Mayor doesn’t want to address the issue, he should be feeling the heat about it from City Council members, members of the Legislature, and everyone else. We don’t need HPD officers freelancing with ICE. Let’s get this under control while we still can.