Houston mayor curbs cooperation of US city’s police with ICE

What the report says

Houston Mayor John Whitmire has ordered the city’s police department to sharply reduce cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters. Under the new policy, Houston police will contact ICE only when someone is arrested for a jailable offence, and people stopped for minor traffic violations will no longer be referred simply because they have an administrative immigration warrant.

The move, announced on Friday in Houston, reverses a policy Whitmire introduced in April after pressure from then-Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott had threatened to cut off about $110 million in state public safety grants, arguing that the city’s limits on police-ICE contact violated Texas Senate Bill 4, a 2017 law restricting local efforts to curb cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also sued the mayor, the city council and the police chief over the earlier ordinance.

Whitmire said he consulted Texas’s newly elected governor, lieutenant governor and comptroller before changing course, and said the goal was to ease fear and anxiety in the city. Houston Police Chief J Noe Diaz said he supported the revision and that the department had already begun implementing it. The decision comes amid close scrutiny of immigration enforcement in Houston, where local police reportedly contacted ICE far more often in 2025 than in the previous year.

Immigrant-rights advocates welcomed the change, while Whitmire said he hoped Houston’s approach could serve as a model for other Texas cities. In a related development, Austin’s mayor asked city officials to revisit their own policy on ICE warrants.