Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed an executive order on Nov. 6 limiting the police department’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Speaking at a press conference, Whitmire said the policy is meant to reduce fear and anxiety across Houston and would help ensure that people charged with new jailable offenses, including violent crimes, are removed from the streets.
The move marks a departure from the approach taken under Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost his reelection bid to Gina Hinojosa in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin, will become the first Democrat to serve as Texas governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995. She has pledged to lead a bipartisan administration in Texas.
Whitmire said he had been in communication with Texas’s incoming leadership and bipartisan members of the legislature. He said he would take responsibility for the change even though the current administration remains in office for two more months, saying that “elections matter” and that the issue should be nonpartisan.
The order directs the Houston Police Department to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only when a person arrested for jailable offenses is also subject to an administrative ICE warrant, according to the mayor’s office.
Noe Diaz, the city’s police chief, said the department would no longer contact ICE about people who have an administrative warrant but have not been arrested.
“For example, if our police officers pull someone over for a minor traffic infraction and they write a citation, that person receives a citation and goes about their day,” Diaz said.
The police chief has sent out a department-wide memo informing officers about the policy change following the order, according to the mayor’s office.
The Epoch Times reached out to Abbott’s office and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
In April, Abbott threatened to withhold $110 million in public safety funding to Houston after the city council passed an ordinance aimed at limiting local police coordination with ICE. He also threatened to cut public safety grants to Dallas and Austin over similar policies. The council later voted 13–4 to amend the Houston ordinance, a move Whitmire said he discussed in advance with Abbott’s office.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also filed a lawsuit on April 16 challenging the ordinance, alleging that it broke a 2017 state law against local policies that curb immigration enforcement. Paxton lost the state’s U.S. Senate race to state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat, in the midterm elections.
Protests followed in Houston in July after an ICE officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national whom the agency identified as an illegal immigrant.
ICE alleged that Salgado Araujo tried to flee, rammed an ICE vehicle, and ignored repeated verbal commands before attempting to run over an ICE officer with his vehicle. The officer then opened fire in self-defense, striking Salgado Araujo, the agency stated. Salgado Araujo was taken to the hospital, where he later died.
The shooting came as ICE stated that its officers were facing an increase in violent confrontations during immigration enforcement operations.
Chase Smith, Tom Gantert, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
