Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz, right, and Houston Police Officers’ Union president Douglas Griffith speak at a Houston City Council meeting on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
On April 21, a woman in North Houston called 911 to report a man threatened to kill her.
According to a Houston Police Department incident report obtained by Houston Public Media, the man had three outstanding warrants and was arrested.
The woman had an immigration warrant. HPD reported her to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The incident report does not state whether she was detained by federal immigration agents.
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Houston City Council member Mario Castillo, who represents the area, called the incident “concerning” and said he “asked to meet with HPD to discuss.”
That HPD officer’s call to ICE was one of more than 100 from April through June, according to data the department released last week to members of the city council.
Council member Alejandra Salinas, who shared the data publicly, spearheaded the ordinance requiring the department to provide quarterly reports about its coordination with ICE. She told Houston Public Media she will seek more information about the incident from Mayor John Whitmire’s administration.
“If it is correct that HPD is contacting ICE when individuals are reporting a crime, I think it is a poor use of limited local law enforcement resources,” Salinas said. “It should be more focused on keeping us safe — and no one in the city of Houston is safer when individuals are reporting crimes and are then being handed over or calls to ICE are being made.”
Related: What does Whitmire’s HPD-ICE policy revision actually mean?
From April through June, 34 of the calls from HPD to ICE came after someone asked emergency responders for help. It’s unclear how many of those incidents mirrored the one on April 21, when the person requesting emergency services was reported to ICE.
HPD called ICE 46 times after encountering someone with an immigration warrant during traffic stops and 17 times while responding to car crashes.
According to HPD, federal immigration agents took direct custody of 19 out of the more than 100 people reported to ICE.
Within the data released by HPD, the description of the incident on April 21 suggested the woman was detained for an hour and taken to jail for “new charges.” The incident report obtained by Houston Public Media states only the man suspected of threatening her was arrested.
A spokesperson for Whitmire did not respond to a request for comment.
HPD did not respond to a request for comment before publication. Afterward, the department referred to a general order instructing officers to contact ICE about immigration warrants.
Salinas said she will ask the mayoral administration “to ensure that the public reporting properly reflects the fact that these calls are being made on those reporting crimes rather than those being alleged to have committed them.”
Evolving policy
The new batch of data from HPD marked the department’s first public accounting of its communication with ICE. In April, the city council required HPD to issue a quarterly report on its coordination with the agency.
City officials also passed a policy prohibiting officers from detaining people or prolonging traffic stops due to civil immigration warrants. But they reversed that measure under pressure from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who threatened to revoke more than $110 million in public safety grants.
According to the data released by HPD last week, officers detained people with immigration warrants for an average of 39 minutes from April through June.
The 103 calls from April through June marked a sharp spike in HPD-ICE contacts. According to the Houston Chronicle, officers called ICE less than 300 times in the 16 months from January 2025 through April 2026 — an average of less than 20 calls per month. Over the past three months, HPD averaged more than 30 calls to ICE per month.
The new data came as immigrant advocates renewed calls for a reexamination of the city’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities, after an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston’s East End earlier this month.
At a news conference after Salgado Araujo’s death, Whitmire said HPD had no involvement in the lead-up to the shooting — and repeated his broad claim that HPD doesn’t collaborate with ICE.
“We recognize that it is a federal police agency that was out of control,” Whitmire said. “HPD was following policy. We do not interact. … We enforce state and city ordinances, and that will continue.”
The uptick in HPD’s calls to ICE is “concerning,” Salinas told Houston Public Media.
“It has now become abundantly clear, and as the mayor has stated, ICE is out of control,” Salinas said. “And the idea that our local law enforcement would be handing over Houstonians to ICE when we cannot trust the agency is very concerning.”