Houston Council Moves to Make Mayor’s ICE Limits Permanent

Overview

• Mayor John Whitmire has ordered Houston police to contact ICE only when a person is being booked into jail on new charges or other warrants and to stop prolonging detentions for civil immigration warrants.
• Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Edward Pollard and Tiffany Thomas filed a Prop A ordinance to convert the mayor’s executive order into city law and make it harder for a future mayor to reverse.
• The ordinance would bar officers from extending traffic stops or detaining people solely because of civil administrative immigration warrants unless a jailable criminal offense is involved and would require fuller quarterly HPD reports on each ICE contact.
• HPD has started implementing the mayor’s directive and its recent quarterly data showed 88 ICE-related contacts from July through September with 17 transfers to ICE, 58 releases at the scene, and average detention times rising to about 46 minutes.
• The measure now goes to a one-week city legal review before it can reach council and could face renewed state funding threats, ICE criticism and legal challenges that would shape whether the protections survive.