Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed an executive order Friday limiting when the Houston Police Department can contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reversing a policy he defended for more than a year. Under the Whitmire executive order, HPD officers will contact ICE only when a person “is already going to jail on new charges or other warrants” and a background check shows an ICE administrative warrant. Whitmire announced the change at a surprise news conference alongside Police Chief J. Noe Diaz and tied it directly to Tuesday’s results, when Democrats swept Texas’ statewide offices. “Elections matter,” he said.
For everyday encounters with police, the change is simple. Whitmire said a traffic stop will no longer lead to an immigration check. “You write a citation or you warn them and they go about their way,” he said. “No contact with ICE over nonviolent, non jailable offenses. It reduces the fear and anxiety.” He said the city would focus on immigrants “that pose a danger, not those that are going about their family business, work and education.”
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An ICE administrative warrant is not the same as a criminal warrant signed by a judge. It is a civil document issued by immigration officials saying ICE wants to detain someone, usually for deportation. Since March 2020, HPD policy had required officers to contact ICE any time they ran into someone with one of those warrants, even during a routine stop with no arrest. HPD reported that its officers called ICE 88 times from July through September of this year alone.
Under the new order, once a person is booked into jail, any decisions about ICE fall to Harris County, which runs the jail, rather than to the police department.
The Whitmire executive order is a sharp turn for a mayor who resisted every push to change the policy. Immigrant advocates and several City Council members spent months pressing him, and in April the council approved an ordinance limiting when officers could contact ICE. Whitmire argued the city’s hands were tied. He pointed to Senate Bill 4, the Texas law that bans so called sanctuary policies, and said Governor Greg Abbott’s administration had warned it could pull state funding from Houston if the city did not follow the state’s reading of that law.
Pressure built over the past year as ICE activity in Houston turned deadly. A man named Lorenzo Salgado was fatally shot by an ICE agent during a traffic stop, and another man was hospitalized after being struck by an ICE vehicle. In March, a Houston Chronicle investigation found at least two HPD officers had personally driven people to ICE agents, which led Chief Diaz to give ICE a 30 minute window to respond before officers move on.
Tuesday changed the math for Whitmire. Democrats won every major statewide race in Texas, including Gina Hinojosa’s win over Abbott for governor and James Talarico’s Senate victory. Abbott remains in office for about two more months, and Whitmire said he is moving forward anyway. He has said he is ready for the backlash.
Houston is the fourth largest city in the country, and the order is one of the first moves by any major city to limit cooperation with ICE since Tuesday’s election. ICE had not responded to requests for comment on the order as of Friday afternoon.
