Houston Council Members Move to Put Whitmire's ICE Limits Into City Law, So No Future Mayor Can Undo Them Alone
Three days after the mayor limited when Houston police contact ICE, Council Members Salinas, Pollard and Thomas want the limits written into the city code itself — with fuller public reporting. The mayor's office warns the ordinance route could put Houston at greater legal risk under state law.
Mayor John Whitmire's new limits on Houston police cooperation with federal immigration authorities could outlast his administration, if three of his colleagues on City Council get their way. Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Edward Pollard and Tiffany Thomas are proposing an ordinance that would write the limits Whitmire set by executive order on Friday into city law, so that no future mayor could reverse them acting alone, FOX 26 Houston reported Monday.
The mayor's Nov. 6 order directs the Houston Police Department to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement only when a person is already going to jail on new charges or other warrants and a national database check turns up an ICE administrative warrant; being subject to immigration enforcement, by itself, is not enough for officers to contact ICE, extend a detention or take someone into custody. The council proposal would put those same limits — on extending a stop, detaining someone or contacting ICE based solely on a civil immigration warrant — into the municipal code, and would add detail to HPD's existing quarterly reports, including the reason for a jail booking and whether the person officers contacted ICE about was a victim or a suspect.
"The protections that the mayor announced on Friday should not just stay with one mayor, but should last throughout Houston and be the law of the land," Salinas told FOX 26. Thomas said she has asked since July for more information about the circumstances behind the encounters the quarterly reports count. From July through September, before Friday's order, HPD recorded 88 immigration-related database hits or ICE contacts out of 292,975 person checks; 58 people were released at the scene, 17 were transferred to ICE and 13 were jailed on separate charges unrelated to immigration. The sponsors filed the proposal under Proposition A, the charter provision that lets three or more council members place a lawful item on a regular council agenda; it still needs the city legal department's review and a council vote, and no vote date was announced.
The mayor's office told FOX 26 that Whitmire stands by his executive order and believes amending the ordinance with additional provisions would put Houston at even greater risk of violating state law — a reference to Senate Bill 4, the Texas law restricting local policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson criticized local efforts to limit cooperation and said ICE becomes more visible in communities when local officials do so. The argument now moves from the mayor's office to the council chamber, where the question is no longer what the policy is, but how permanently Houston wants it written.
