On Tuesday, April 2, 2026 during a heated evening public comment session in Houston City Hall, a reportedly record-breaking 130-plus people signed up to speak. The overwhelming majority supported Proposition A, mandating that traffic stops end when their lawful purpose ends, not when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrives. The handful opposed argued that it put the needs of immigrants and “special interest groups” over the needs of Houstonians who value law and order.
Sharon Steinmann/Houston Chronicle
Here, in the largest city in Texas, the fourth largest in the nation, we are the product of hard won ideals. Where the swamp meets the prairie, we have carved from the earth an indefatigable identity that has survived hurricanes, oil busts and other great misfortunes.
For a time, our city produced leaders who, though far from perfect, could express our love of freedom alongside an openness to strangers seeking refuge. Leaders like Barbara Jordan and George H.W. Bush who sought to balance enforcement with compassion.
Today, however, our guiding light, our moral compass, can apparently be boiled down to five simple words:
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“However, Gov. Greg Abbott disagrees.”
At least that’s what our mayor seems to believe. Just last week, when he voted for an ordinance that clarified how Houston police cooperates with federal immigration agents, Whitmire joined the majority of his colleagues around the horseshoe in passing the policy in a 12-5 vote. It was, he said then, a “statement that we listen,” that the city had heard the worries of untold numbers of immigrants who are now afraid of reporting crimes. Afraid that doing so will get them caught in the president’s deportation machine that has killed American citizens on the streets and put dozens more in detention along with thousands of immigrants, many of whom are law-abiding and even here legally.
But this week, Whitmire’s tune has changed. His guiding principle, it seems, has overridden the “empathy” that helped him cast his vote last week.
“I voted for the revised ‘Prop A’ ordinance…believing it affirmed our original policy,” Whitmire wrote in a statement on April 13.
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“However, Gov. Greg Abbott disagrees.”
With the threat of $114 million in withdrawn public safety grants from the state, Whitmire not only backtracked, he refused to fight back, or even seek a compromise. When Council Member Alejandra Salinas pointed out this Tuesday the “clear legal pathway” to challenge Abbott’s underhanded attack, he rejected the idea. Whitmire had already called for a special meeting Friday to try to undo the vote he had just defended days ago.
Houston is, he insisted, an “instrument of the state.”
The only opinion that matters, per Whitmire, is Abbott’s.
If you think that stung voters or his colleagues at City Hall, try telling that to a room full of opinion journalists. But don’t worry about us. We’ll recover.
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We skimmed the City Charter — boy, is that thing long — and while we did find passages about regulating electric railway companies, marketplaces and jailhouse punishments, we didn’t see Abbott’s name.
Perhaps Whitmire is reading from a different document. He certainly doesn’t seem to be reading the Constitution, the one that guarantees due process and protects people from being held unlawfully. That’s the document that Salinas, Ed Pollard and Abbie Kamin — all three council members are lawyers — consulted when crafting the ordinance. And he doesn’t seem to be reading the ordinance either, which plainly states that police officers must still call immigration agents when they see a civil administrative warrant pop up on their computers.
No. Apparently he just took a shake at the old Abbott 8 Ball. This strong mayor city is looking pretty weak.
Abbott meanwhile, insists that withholding public safety dollars is about public safety. Yeah, try to figure that one out. But even the animated and staunchly anti-ordinance Houston Police Officers’ Union head, Doug Griffith, noted that there were fewer than 100 of these sorts of ICE handoffs in the previous year. Life changing for those individuals and their families, no doubt, but a small number for a city the size of Houston. This ordinance will have little effect on total deportation numbers. For people arrested on criminal charges, our county jail will continue to honor ICE holds and hand over immigrants. We will likely remain the top deporting region in the nation.
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But this ordinance is about more than mere symbolism — it is about trust. It is about the critical social contract between residents and their local police that has been shredded under the Trump administration and that cities must repair. Not just for the sake of trust but for the public safety of us all. When a woman without legal status is beaten by her partner, she shouldn’t hesitate to call the police.
If Whitmire won’t fight back against the latest Austin overreach — a fight legal experts think he can win — we hope the rest of City Council will. We hope they remember the oath they each took and the six simple words — a guiding light, as it were — therein as they promised to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”