Houston Democratic Mayor John Whitmire is canceling local police cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a blue wave swept across Texas during Tuesday’s election.
On Friday, Whitmire signed an order limiting the ability of local police to contact ICE, which would allow some illegal immigrants to go unpunished.
“This is the right thing at the right time,” Whitmire said at a news conference announcing the change.
“No one has to worry about them having a warrant, search, and that includes ICE unless they are charged with a new jailable offense, including a dangerous crime, a violent crime. This will improve our public safety and reduce the fear and anxiety of our students and staff, and I will take responsibility for making this change even if the current administration is still in office for two months,” he said.
Officials said that under the new order, ICE will be contacted only when local officials arrest illegal immigrants who are on administrative immigration orders for jailable crimes. Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz Jr. said in a statement Friday that if someone is pulled over and issued a ticket, local police will let them go.
“The message is clear: ICE is only contacted when someone commits a jailable offense,” Diaz said. “For example, if our officers pull someone over for a minor traffic violation and issue a citation, that person receives the citation and continues to work.”
“If HPD has an administrative warrant and no arrests have been made, they will no longer contact ICE,” the police chief said.
Whitmire said he hopes Houston’s new order will serve as a “model for Texas cities” and said he has been “in constant contact with the new state leadership” recently.
In April, the Houston City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting officers from detaining people with administrative immigration orders, then revised it two weeks later after the state threatened to withdraw more than $110 million in public safety funding. The restrictions allow officials to release people on administrative immigration orders who have not committed a jailable offense.
The state requires public safety grant recipients to cooperate with ICE. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in a previous interview with The Telegraph that if they refuse to help federal immigration authorities, “they will confiscate the money” and must “repay the state for every dollar they receive.”
With help from Abbott’s office, Whitmire amended the ordinance after voting in favor. The revised statute does not provide that anything in it will limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities required by state law, and HPD directs officers to detain persons for a reasonable period of time to allow ICE to detain them.
At a news conference on Friday, Whitmire said he “had to listen” to Abbott at the time because “our finances were at stake.”
Texas Democratic Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa also criticized the immigration enforcement actions.
“As governor, I will never use Texas as a staging ground for operations to terrorize families and enrich our families. [Abbott’s] Donors,” Hinojosa said at the Jan. 31 rally.