Alejandra Salinas
A trio of Houston City Council members are pushing a plan to change the way Houston police officers work with federal immigration agents, sidestepping Mayor John Whitmire’s authority a week after the mayor announced a more modest tweak to the same police policy.
The announcement comes amid widespread criticism of the city’s cooperation with U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement and in the wake of a Houston Chronicle report that found in at least two cases Houston Police Department officers directly transported drivers to immigration agents – actions that Whitmire said violated city policy and that legal experts said may have been unconstitutional.
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Newly elected Council Member Alejandra Salinas and colleagues Abbie Kamin and Edward Pollard are pitching the proposal under Proposition A, a 2023 city charter amendment that allows any three council members to add an item to a meeting agenda as long as it’s legal. The charter typically gives only the mayor the power to place items on the agenda. They outlined their proposal at a news conference Thursday morning.
City Attorney Arturo Michel said afterward that city attorneys now have seven days to review the proposal and will contact peer Texas cities to see how they’ve handled recent rule changes. He also questioned whether aspects of the item would pass legal muster.
Salinas’ proposed ordinance introduces three new requirements for the city’s 5,300 officers.
The ordinance would instruct officers that they “may, but are not required to, contact federal immigration authorities” if they receive a hit for an administrative warrant.
The ordinance also states that officers aren’t allowed to detain people beyond the time necessary to complete the traffic stop or investigation, even if that process is completed before the 30-minute window expires.
Michel said Thursday that officers need not detain a person for the full 30-minute period.
More broadly, Michel said, city attorneys’ review of the proposed ordinance will focus on whether its language giving officers discretion on when to call ICE violates state law. He also questioned whether the proposal improperly inserts the council into administrative functions, which are the mayor’s purview.
While Whitmire and Diaz last week doubled down on the need to work with federal officials or risk losing grant funds, legal experts and immigration advocates have cautioned city leaders that the current policy risks violating legal precedent and the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
“The Houston Chronicle recently described egregious examples of HPD officers engaging in conduct that appears to violate the Fourth Amendment after encountering individuals subject to ICE administrative warrants,” officials with the ACLU Texas and Texas Civil Rights Project wrote to Whitmire and members of council Wednesday. “Our review of HPD’s general orders, and the new directives announced on March 11… reveal that the department’s policies go well beyond any state or federal authority to comply with ICE administrative warrants and, in so doing, expose the city to risk of significant legal liability.”
Salinas’ proposed ordinance also would require HPD to compile and provide each council member with a semiannual report on the use of city resources for immigration enforcement, excepting information that might jeopardize a criminal investigation.
Those reports would list each instance in which officers checked someone’s immigration status or contacted federal immigration agents, as well as information about the people stopped, detained or arrested, the alleged offense, the officers involved and the location of the incident.
See here and here for the previous updates. As the story notes, there was an earlier effort to do something similar, put forward by now-former CM Letitia Plummer, but it failed because she was unable to get a third member to sign on before her term ended. I was a little concerned when I saw that CM Kamin was one of the three on this proposal, since her term will be ending within the next two to three months (I have no idea offhand when the District C runoff will be), but it sounds like this will move forward before then, and I also fully expect the next District C Council member to be on board with this anyway.
I’m just really happy to see this, it’s long overdue and it reinforces why CM Salinas won her runoff. Here’s a bit from the press release I got about this:
Bexar County and the cities of Austin and Dallas have already adopted policies stating that civil administrative warrants alone are not a lawful basis for local arrest or prolonged detention, and do not require officers to contact ICE.
“This ordinance helps ensure our police are focused on what they do best – preventing crime and protecting neighborhoods,” said Council Member Salinas. “We are not safer when officers are taken off the streets to wait on the side of the road for ICE, when families are afraid to report crimes, or when trust between the community and law enforcement breaks down. Our peers across Texas, from Bexar County to the cities of Austin and Dallas, have already taken that step. It’s time for Houston to meet this moment.”
“We are not going to turn a blind eye to what is happening. What ICE has done not only sows fear and mistrust, and forced victims into the shadows, it strains local law enforcement resources and time,” said Council Member Kamin. “This ordinance gives HPD the flexibility to determine what they know is best. The term “administrative warrant” is a misnomer. What we are talking about are administrative requests with no nexus to criminal acts, that are created by ICE agents themselves. It is not the same as a standard judicial warrant. If an individual poses a risk to public safety, I trust local law enforcement to act, regardless of someone’s immigration status.”
“As a Council Member representing the most diverse district in our city, I’ve heard directly from families, workers, and small business owners who are living with fear and uncertainty,” said Council Member Pollard. “That’s why I support this proposal. It’s about drawing a clear line that prioritizes public safety, builds trust between our residents and law enforcement, and ensures that we put our resources towards criminals and not displacing families.”
“Fear is showing up in our schools – thousands of students are missing class and parents are afraid to drive their kids to school,” said Jackie Anderson, President of the Houston Federation of Teachers. “If our students don’t feel safe, they can’t focus on learning and nothing else we do matters. This ordinance will help Houston rebuild the trust our schools depend on so families feel safe showing up to the classroom every day.”
A broad coalition of more than two dozen prominent legal, labor, faith, and community organizations representing thousands of Houston families have published a letter supporting the ordinance, calling it legally sound and essential to strengthening community trust and public safety.
A copy of the press Q&A that came with this release is here, and a copy of that letter of support is here. I look forward to this getting its time on the Council agenda. Kudos all around for making this happen.
I have been told by fellow attorneys that I.C.E. was waiting to pick up a defendant in Justice McCumber’s court in Galveston. I am running this down to see who is call I.C.E. for traffic ticket violations.