Houston Mayor John Whitmire listens to a speaker during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston City Council member Abbie Kamin speaks during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston City Council member Edward Pollard speaks during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston Mayor John Whitmire listens to a speaker during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston City Council member Sandra Salinas speaks during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston Mayor John Whitmire speaks during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston City Council member Mary Nan Huffman listens during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston Mayor John Whitmire speaks during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston City Council member Edward Pollard speaks during a City Council meeting considering whether to repeal a newly approved proposal limiting cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at City Hall in Houston on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Houston City Council amended its recently approved policy limiting police officers’ interactions with federal immigration agents after Gov. Greg Abbott’s office threatened $114 million in city grants, despite some council members saying the changes will dilute the policy’s effectiveness.
The 13-4 vote came amid a chaotic two weeks at City Hall that tested Mayor John Whitmire’s relationships with state leaders, drove dozens of residents to protest or address the council, saw Attorney General Ken Paxton sue the city – and which appeared to leave in doubt key questions about how exactly Houston police will implement the amended policy.
The council’s original policy, passed 12-5 two weeks ago, eliminated a prior rule that officers wait 30 minutes for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrive when they encounter someone with a civil immigration warrant.
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Officers may temporarily detain someone “as long as reasonably necessary to complete the legitimate purpose of the initial stop or investigation,” the initial policy said, in keeping with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The newly amended policy, which Whitmire’s staff negotiated with Abbott’s office, added “and for other legitimate purposes discovered during the detention” after that phrase. The changes deleted text stating that an ICE administrative warrant alone does not justify a stop or arrest, and that the person must be released if “reasonable suspicion” of another crime does not exist.
Speaking to reporters before a campaign event in Conroe on Wednesday evening, Abbott said the council vote put the city in compliance with the terms of a contract it signed to receive grant funds.
But the Houston Police Department has not yet implemented the amended policy in its internal documents, and Abbott said HPD “still has not agreed to the terms of what the contract requires.”
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“We just need to make sure that the police department goes along with the verbiage that we agreed to and what the city of Houston passed,” Abbott said. “It better happen in the next 24 hours.”
Whitmire’s office and HPD did not immediately return calls seeking a response to Abbott’s comments.
FUNDING THREAT: Greg Abbott threatens to pull millions in Houston grant funds if ICE policy is not revoked
Council Member Tiffany D. Thomas joined the policy’s original authors, Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin and Edward Pollard, in opposing Wednesday’s amendments. Some council members who supported the changes said they feared the financial repercussions of voting no.
Council Member Martha Castex-Tatum said she had heard the many residents begging the council to fight back, get creative and stand firm, but she said the risks of doing so were too high.
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“You can have real concerns about the constitutional questions here,” she said. “And you can also recognize that the city of Houston cannot responsibly put millions of dollars at risk in a fight that we are not positioned, in my opinion, to win.”
Before the vote, Whitmire spoke to his colleagues about the city’s financial strength, and said few state or federal grants come without strings attached.
“All have conditions, all are making a difference,” Whitmire said. “So today we have to decide, do we want to remain strong or not?”
Whitmire said he had begged Salinas to consider the worst case scenario – “which is before us today,” he added – and said Salinas told him the governor wouldn’t intervene.
“I know Abbott, I voted against him more than any living person,” said Whitmire, who served in the Texas Senate from 1983 to 2023. “And quite frankly, y’all played right into his hands.”
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“You voted for it,” interrupted Pollard.
Whitmire boasts of his relationships with state leaders, Pollard added, but “my partners don’t sue me.” Letting the governor control this process, he said, was “a slap in the face.”
Whitmire long fought attempts to limit HPD’s ICE cooperation, repeatedly saying the city was following state and federal laws, then voted for the ICE measure two weeks ago. He said it codified existing policy, and that passing it showed the city was listening.
After Abbott’s threat, however, Whitmire said the policy must be “corrected” and scheduled a special council meeting to repeal it. The mayor then canceled that meeting, announced Abbott had extended the city’s deadline, and negotiated Wednesday’s amendments with the governor’s office.
MAYOR FLIPS: Mayor Whitmire reverses course on Houston ICE policy after Greg Abbott threatens city funding
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Whitmire told the council on Wednesday that the amended policy did not include everything he wanted. But the mayor argued “any objective attorney” would know that if the city were to fight Abbott in court rather than negotiate, any favorable ruling from a trial judge would be overruled by the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court.
“Time is costing us dollars. It’s costing us public safety,” Whitmire said.
Seeking clarity on the rules
It’s unclear how the amended policy will affect what Houston police do when they encounter someone with a civil immigration warrant, but some council members and legal experts said the changes undermine the council’s original policy.
In response to questions from Salinas, City Attorney Arturo Michel said the changes wouldn’t change the fact that local police can’t hold people with a civil immigration warrant for ICE to arrive. Michel added the city could not return to its prior policy of giving ICE agents 30 minutes to pick up someone with a civil immigration warrant.
But Whitmire offered a conflicting explanation, saying HPD sergeants called to the scene in such cases would consider “the totality” of the situation before deciding whether to release the person.
Salinas tried to get clarification on which was true, but Whitmire said both explanations were consistent.
The ordinance as passed two weeks ago clearly defined administrative warrants, said Travis Fife, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, stating they are “not probably cause for a criminal arrest” and are “civil in nature and, alone, (do) not justify a stop, arrest, or continued detention by local law enforcement.”
The amendment deleted that language, which legal experts said increases the risk that Houston police will hold people after the original purpose for their detention, such as a traffic stop, is addressed — as has happened in some cases.
Salinas at one point put forward an amendment seeking to clarify that immigration warrants are civil documents that put someone at risk of arrest only by ICE, not local police.
Some conservative council members spoke in opposition. Council Member Mary Nan Huffman told the council that changing the proposed language in the ordinance would be “playing with fire.”
“We need this funding. We need these partnerships,” Huffman said. “The city of Houston, we can’t do everything alone. We need the county, we need the state. We need all the help we can get.”
Salinas ultimately withdrew the amendment.
EXPERTS WEIGH IN: Mayor John Whitmire’s proposed changes could erode new ICE policy’s effectiveness, legal experts say
Kamin also tried to delay the vote by a week, saying the council was being asked to vote on a vague proposal they had only recently received.
“The governor is trying to bully our city into submission, withholding public safety funding,” Kamin said. “He did that, not us.”
Typically council members can force a one-week delay on any item, but Whitmire said doing so would make the item moot given Abbott’s deadline, and forced a vote on the delay; it failed 13-4.
Caro Rivera Nelson, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas, said the council had “caved to the governor’s threats.”
“This ordinance would have allowed local police to focus on public safety in accordance with state and federal law,” she said. “Instead, officers are again left without clear guidance and remain under the same conditions in which local officers were doing ICE’s job — a job they’re not trained for, paid for, or legally authorized to do.”
Ahead of the council’s vote Wednesday, ICE in Houston issued a news release backing the amendments.
“When ICE works with local and state law enforcement partners,” said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston acting Field Office Director Paul McBride, “communities are safer, illegal aliens are arrested, and the American people are protected.”
— Reporters Benjamin Wermund and Catherine Dominguez contributed to this report