John Cornyn pushes cities crackdown after Abbott’s Houston ICE threat

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is pushing to crack down on cities that limit local police cooperation with federal immigration officers, the latest GOP response to Houston’s new ICE policy. 

The Texas Republican filed legislation Thursday to strip some federal funding from so-called “sanctuary” cities, allow states to sue cities and counties that do not cooperate with ICE and bar states from prosecuting local police who help with immigration enforcement. 

It’s a beefed-up version of a bill Cornyn led in 2016 that drew 53 votes in the Senate, but fell shy of the threshold needed to pass. Republicans in the Senate still do not have the numbers to overcome a potential Democratic filibuster.

Texas lawmakers passed a law in 2017 requiring local police to cooperate with federal immigration officials. Still, some cities across the state have sought to manage how much local police interact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive. 

Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to strip $110 million in grants from Houston after the city council last week voted to scrap a policy that requires officers to wait 30 minutes for ICE officers to pick up someone with a civil immigration warrant. The city’s new policy also requires the department to make reports to the council about its cooperation with ICE. 

A spokesman for the governor said this week that his office is also investigating other cities, but did not specify which ones. 

In March, Austin moved to bar local police from arresting or detaining someone just because ICE has issued a noncriminal warrant for their arrest. That policy also requires officers to get supervisor approval before waiting for ICE to arrive and detain an individual.

San Antonio, meanwhile, has started reporting ICE requests for police assistance and related costs, but has not gone so far as to limit cooperation. 

Cornyn is locked in a heated primary runoff against Attorney General Ken Paxton whose office is also investigating Houston and Austin over their ICE policies.