Mayor John Whitmire
Houston City Council amended its recently approved policy limiting police officers’ interactions with federal immigration agents after Gov. Greg Abbott’s office threatened $114 million in city grants, despite some council members saying the changes will dilute the policy’s effectiveness.
The 13-4 vote capped a chaotic two weeks at City Hall that tested Mayor John Whitmire’s relationships with state leaders, drove dozens of residents to protest or address the council, saw Attorney General Ken Paxton sue the city — and which appeared to leave in doubt key questions about how exactly Houston police will implement the amended policy.
The council’s original policy, passed 12-5 two weeks ago, eliminated a prior rule that officers wait 30 minutes for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrive when they encounter someone with a civil immigration warrant.
Officers may temporarily detain someone “as long as reasonably necessary to complete the legitimate purpose of the initial stop or investigation,” the initial policy said, in keeping with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The newly amended policy, which Mayor John Whitmire’s staff negotiated with Abbott’s office, added “and for other legitimate purposes discovered during the detention” after that phrase. The changes deleted text stating that an ICE administrative warrant alone does not justify a stop or arrest, and that the person must be released if “reasonable suspicion” of another crime does not exist.
Council Member Tiffany D. Thomas joined the policy’s original authors, Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin and Edward Pollard, in opposing Wednesday’s amendments. Some council members who supported the changes said they feared the financial repercussions of voting no.
Council Member Martha Castex-Tatum said she had heard the many residents begging the council to fight back, get creative and stand firm, but she said the risks of doing so were too high.
“You can have real concerns about the constitutional questions here,” she said. “And you can also recognize that the city of Houston cannot responsibly put millions of dollars at risk in a fight that we are not positioned, in my opinion, to win.”
Before the vote, Whitmire spoke to his colleagues about the city’s financial strength, and said few state or federal grants come without strings attached.
“All have conditions, all are making a difference,” Whitmire said. “So today we have to decide, do we want to remain strong or not?”
Whitmire said he had begged Salinas to consider the worst case scenario – “which is before us today,” he added – and said Salinas told him the governor wouldn’t intervene.
“I know Abbott, I voted against him more than any living person,” said Whitmire, who served in the Texas Senate from 1983 to 2023. “And quite frankly, y’all played right into his hands.”
“You voted for it,” interrupted Pollard.
Whitmire boasts of his relationships with state leaders, Pollard added, but “my partners don’t sue me.” Letting the governor control this process, he said, was “a slap in the face.”
[…]
It’s unclear how the amended policy will affect what Houston police do when they encounter someone with a civil immigration warrant, but some council members and legal experts said the changes undermine the council’s original policy.
In response to questions from Salinas, City Attorney Arturo Michel said the changes wouldn’t change the fact that local police can’t hold people with a civil immigration warrant for ICE to arrive. Michel added the city could not return to its prior policy of giving ICE agents 30 minutes to pick up someone with a civil immigration warrant.
But Whitmire offered a conflicting explanation, saying HPD sergeants called to the scene in such cases would consider “the totality” of the situation before deciding whether to release the person.
Salinas tried to get clarification on which was true, but Whitmire said both explanations were consistent.
“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
See here, here, here, and here for the background. For a better understanding of what this means:
Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Travis Fife said the ordinance as passed effectively spelled out the role of administrative warrants, such as by stating that they are “civil in nature and, alone, (do) not justify a stop, arrest, or continued detention by local law enforcement.” By proposing to delete that language, Fife said, the amendment risks police prolonging someone’s detention solely on the basis of an administrative warrant.
“This is a feeble attempt by the mayor to have his cake and eat it too,” Fife said. “But it dilutes the effectiveness of the original ordinance so as to render it almost meaningless.”
Jennefer Canales-Pelaez, Texas policy attorney and strategist with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, agreed.
“This proposal is effectively a repeal of the ordinance’s provisions that prohibited HPD from making unlawful seizures,” she said. “The Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States said clearly that state officers don’t have power to arrest people for immigration violations. This amendment runs afoul of that by giving HPD virtually no guidance at all on how to respond to ICE warrants, although such papers are clearly not legally enforceable by HPD.”
The amendment, Fife added, appears to redefine what an ICE administrative warrant is in a legally incorrect way. The amendment cuts language saying these “civil” documents are “not probable cause for a criminal arrest,” and instead would define the warrants as “commanding the arrest of an individual.”
Nikki Luellen, an ACLU of Texas criminal justice expert, added that the proposal is “a greenlight for deeper collaboration between ICE and the Houston Police Department.”
Thomas Hogan, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, took a different view of the amendment, saying the deleted language is “a necessary concession to the politics of the situation.”
“The mayor and city council are caught in a political bind,” he said. “They need to allow HPD to comply with the law and do not want to risk their state funding, but they also do not want to be seen as cooperating with ICE. From a legal and political standpoint, these changes are a reasonable attempt to thread the needle.”
For sure, this was about Greg Abbott slapping us around. If you, like me, wanted to see Whitmire mayor up and tell Abbott to improve his reading comprehension skills, well, you were disappointed. This is the Whitmire experience in a nutshell. The Dallas Observer provides another perspective, and the Trib has more.
This Whitmire guy is quite the City leader.
This Abbott guy is quite the extortionist.
Yep, the amendment gives so much discretion to the officers as to make it entirely void and worthless.
Just like John Whitmire.
Did I say something about never enough caving to fascists? Yeah, Herr Abbott still making threats. We should settle this in court, since Paxton already put it there.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2026/04/23/it-better-happen-in-the-next-24-hours-gov-abbott-says-hpd-still-not-in-compliance-with-ice-policy/