Houston police encountered 103 people with civil immigration warrants from April through June, releasing most of them and handing 19 people to federal agents, according to the first report police leaders released under a new requirement passed by city council.
Many have argued the council should renew a fight from earlier this year over a briefly-lived ordinance that restricted how police interact with ICE agents. Friday’s report is the lone surviving requirement from that ordinance, which passed in a 12-5 vote and then was largely reversed two weeks later, after Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to pull $114 million in grant funding from the city over the issue.
Still intact is a requirement that HPD release quarterly reports to city council on officers’ interactions with ICE agents.
The one-page report covering April 1 to June 30 shows 57% of the people HPD encountered with civil immigration warrants were released. Another 18% were handed to ICE, and 14% were charged with new crimes and booked into jail. Some warrants could not be confirmed, and two people were transported to a hospital.
The people were detained for 39 minutes, on average, during those 103 calls, the report shows.
That data covered the total time officers spent on each call, whereas Friday’s HPD report includes only the time the officers actively detained the 103 people they encountered with civil ICE warrants.
Mayor John Whitmire’s office and HPD did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new report.
Three council members brought the proposal forward last spring amid a swirling debate over the city’s handling of civil immigration warrants. President Donald Trump’s administration added 700,000 of those documents to a national law enforcement database shortly after he took office last year.
Immigration advocates have questioned whether it violates the U.S. Constitution for local officers to detain people based solely upon the civil warrants, and both national police associations and Houston leaders have said police shouldn’t make arrests on that basis alone.
After the public battle that ended with the city going back to its initial guidance that officers wait “a reasonable amount of time” for ICE agents after calling on noncriminal administrative warrants, public outcry over how Houston police were cooperating with ICE slightly quieted.
Salgado was driving his white work van with three other men inside when ICE agents began to pursue them in unmarked vehicles. The encounter eventually ended just before 7 a.m. July 7 in the 6800 block of Canal Street when an agent shot and killed Salgado.