Kyle McClenagan/Houston Public Media
Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz speak at an HPD facility groundbreaking on July 9, 2026.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s administration has again delayed an application for a $150 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The city council was slated to consider the application on Wednesday, but the administration pulled the item from the agenda on Monday.
The funding would come from the DOJ’s Model Cities Initiative. DOJ’s grant guidelines state “applicants must ensure that their initiatives align” with a number of priorities, including “immigration law enforcement operations.”
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After questions from Houston Public Media last week, Mayor John Whitmire’s administration pulled the grant application from the city council’s agenda for the Sept. 16 meeting.
In an interview on Friday, Whitmire downplayed the connection between the grant and immigration enforcement.
“It sure kind of alarms me when you make people think we’re trying to get money for immigration enforcement,” Whitmire said. “We don’t enforce immigration. You know that. We follow the state law.”
The Houston Police Department (HPD) requires officers to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they encounter someone with a civil immigration warrant, and officers are allowed to wait a “reasonable amount of time” for federal agents to arrive.
Related: Revised HPD-ICE policy allows city police to hold people ‘reasonable amount of time’
When the city council and Whitmire attempted to curtail coordination with ICE in April, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to revoke more than $110 million in public safety funding to Houston.
“We’re asking for a clarification [on the DOJ grant guidelines], but the best legal analysis we’ve gotten internally through from HPD is it’s really not anything more than what we’re doing now,” Whitmire said. “Just following the state law and city ordinances on warrants.”
In its guidelines, DOJ set out a Sept. 1 deadline for applications. A DOJ spokesperson declined to answer multiple questions from Houston Public Media, including whether it would grant an extension to Houston.
“We have received dozens of applications and are actively reviewing them,” the DOJ spokesperson said via email. “We have nothing further to add beyond the guidance that has already been released.”
Related: Violent crime in Houston is down in 2026 as traffic fatalities outpace murders
The Model Cities Initiative is intended to “slash violent crime in major metropolitan areas all across our country,” President Donald Trump said in a video announcement in June.
“With your help, we will put more police on our streets, and we will put dangerous criminals behind bars where they belong, and we want to keep them there,” Trump said.
The Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security stated the city’s proposed program “is designed to help reduce crime and disorder, protect innocent citizens and victims, restore public order in high-impact places, and create a practical model that can be replicated nationwide.”
The city’s initiative would “strengthen enforcement and crime suppression, modernize public safety technology and intelligence, protect victims, improve street-level stabilization and public order, reduce recidivism, address youth violence, and strengthen frontline readiness,” the office stated.
Whitmire’s office did not respond to questions on Monday.
According to data from HPD, there were fewer crimes in Houston from January through June compared to the first half of 2025. HPD reported a nearly 13% decrease in violent crimes and trafficking — including an approximately 38% drop in murders — and property crimes were down nearly 24%.
The data reflected a nationwide, post-pandemic trend. There were more than 470 murders in Houston in 2021, compared to 268 in 2025.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 8:06 p.m. on Sept. 21 after the grant application was pulled from the city council’s agenda.