{"id":250743,"date":"2026-04-15T10:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/250743\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T10:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:35:11","slug":"texas-cities-try-to-address-citizen-anger-over-immigration-crackdown-without-riling-state-leaders-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/250743\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas cities try to address citizen anger over immigration crackdown without riling state leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

As he campaigned for Houston mayor three years ago, John Whitmire repeatedly leaned on his Austin connections<\/a> after serving five decades in the Capitol, first as a state representative and then as a senator, to pitch himself as a peacemaker following years of GOP state leaders clashing with the city\u2019s Democratic leaders. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re ready to sit down and see how they can assist Houston,\u201d the veteran Democrat said after he won the election<\/a>. \u201cFrom day one, there is going to be much better cooperation between the state and the city, and Houston will benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week that collaborative spirit imploded into a controversy over the Houston Police Department\u2019s role in immigration enforcement. <\/p>\n

Days after the Houston City Council \u2014 with Whitmire\u2019s support \u2014 ratified an ordinance to minimize Houston police cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Texas attorney general\u2019s office launched an investigation into the city that could lead to an effort to remove local officials from office. <\/p>\n

Then the governor\u2019s office told the city it is on the brink of losing more $100 million in funding<\/a> because the ordinance violates state grant agreements.<\/p>\n

The political whirlwind encapsulates a tension simmering in city halls across the state\u2019s left-leaning urban cores. From McAllen<\/a> to Dallas<\/a>, residents infuriated with President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown are demanding their city leaders take action to protect them and their neighbors from ICE. <\/p>\n

But those elected officials are largely limited in what they can do by a 2017 state law that sought to ban \u201csanctuary cities<\/a>,\u201d and they may not want to invite scrutiny from state leaders \u2014 who support Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown \u2014 or the White House, which last year directed federal prosecutors<\/a> to probe any local officials who obstruct the president\u2019s mass deportation effort. <\/p>\n

In Houston, Whitmire called a special meeting scheduled for Friday for the city council to reconsider the immigration order \u2014 which nullifies a police policy requiring officers to hold people for ICE \u2014 following the governor\u2019s threat to cancel state public safety funding. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not matter what a council member\u2019s legal opinion is,\u201d Whitmire told reporters<\/a> Tuesday. \u201cThere\u2019s only one opinion that matters, and that\u2019s the governor\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feds used civil warrants to flag undocumented immigrants<\/p>\n

Houston is not the only city under state leaders\u2019 microscope for a local immigration policy but it is the recipient of the most aggressive state response during Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

The origins of the friction trace back to the president\u2019s first term, when Democrat-run cities<\/a> and counties often emerged as the loudest critics and opponents to Trump\u2019s immigration policies, and many instructed their police departments to avoid cooperating with federal immigration authorities \u2014 for example, by refusing to hold undocumented immigrants in local jails until ICE can pick them up for deportation. <\/p>\n

In 2017, amid that local pushback, the state Legislature passed a law<\/a> that prohibited local officials from creating policies that did not let police officers ask people about their legal status or work with federal immigration authorities. Under the law, known as Senate Bill 4<\/a>, the attorney general is required<\/a> to try booting violators from office by filing a petition in court, leading to a hearing on whether the official should be removed from office.<\/p>\n

When Trump returned to the White House last year and launched a nationwide mass deportation effort, one of the ways his administration sought to use local police to help find and apprehend undocumented immigrants was by adding hundreds of thousands of federal immigration warrants \u2014 which are typically civil offenses \u2014 to a crime database routinely used by police across the nation. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf they pop up with a warrant, then we have no alternative but to take those people into custody,\u201d Douglas Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers\u2019 Union, said shortly after<\/a> the change. He is among the critics of the city council\u2019s ordinance.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, stories surfaced around the country of undocumented immigrants being pulled over for minor traffic infractions and then facing deportation after an officer entered their name in the database. Elsewhere, domestic abuse victims have ended up in deportation proceedings after calling police. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cThose outcomes are the consequence of policies that the Trump administration and Gov. Abbott, and the Legislature passed at different times,\u201d said Nick Hudson, senior manager of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of Texas. \u201cIt\u2019s just important to me that people understand how our state leaders and the federal government are working together in a way that is causing enormous harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cities try to thread a needle with policies<\/p>\n

As a result, city leaders in Austin, Houston and beyond have tried crafting policies to instruct officers on what is permissible for them to do under law and assuage residents\u2019 worries while avoiding a showdown with state leaders. <\/p>\n

Houston\u2019s ordinance<\/a>, for example, nullified a Houston Police Department policy instructing officers who encounter a person with an immigration warrant to wait at least half an hour for ICE to pick up the immigrant. <\/p>\n

The ordinance sought to ensure officers do not violate a person\u2019s constitutional rights by holding them longer than \u201creasonably necessary\u201d to complete the initial reason for stopping them. It passed after a string of news reports by the Houston Chronicle documented how Houston police collaborated with ICE, even as Whitmire initially insisted that was not the case<\/a> \u2014 he later admitted<\/a> police were working with ICE. <\/p>\n

One report revealed<\/a> officers had personally delivered two immigrants to ICE, which legal experts said could be a violation of a person\u2019s constitutional rights because the ICE warrants are not grounds for arrest. Another detailed the case<\/a> of a woman who called 911 to report domestic abuse, only to have Houston police call ICE on her.<\/p>\n

The ordinance passed with the mayor\u2019s backing. After receiving a letter from Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a>\u2019s office threatening to cut off the state funds and learning of Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a>\u2019s investigation, Whitmire blamed<\/a> the three council members who had introduced the proposal for the state backlash.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a reasonable ICE policy,\u201d Whitmire said. \u201cBut three council members that are running for office decided to make this a higher profile issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a Tuesday city council meeting, Alejandra Salinas, one of the three council sponsors, got into a fiery exchange with Whitmire and urged the mayor to stand by the ordinance and fight back in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be a great mistake to do anything else,\u201d Salinas said. <\/p>\n

Other cities have tried different approaches. El Paso leaders passed a resolution opposing<\/a> a proposed ICE detention center, while San Antonio officials are trying to offer residents transparency by releasing information<\/a> about when local police help ICE. <\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s office, which did not respond to requests for comment, is also reportedly<\/a> investigating Austin over a new ordinance limiting police cooperation with ICE.<\/p>\n

Austin leaders passed their own measure following a town hall held by three council members in February after police officers responding to a domestic disturbance called ICE on a woman and her daughter, who were swiftly deported<\/a> to Honduras. The town hall saw angry residents<\/a> demanding that they stand up against ICE. <\/p>\n

Vanessa Fuentes, one of the council members, said that incident and the subsequent outrage led to the city council approving a policy that aims to ensure residents feel safe seeking help from police but also follows the 2017 law. <\/p>\n

The policy requires officers to talk to a supervisor before turning an immigrant over to ICE and clarified that an ICE warrant alone was insufficient to detain or arrest someone. If a supervisor approves, an officer can wait for ICE to respond.<\/p>\n

Austin police are \u201cfirst and foremost \u2026 here to provide safety for our community,\u201d Fuentes said in an interview before Paxton\u2019s probe. \u201cIt really has been really challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disclosure: ACLU Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As he campaigned for Houston mayor three years ago, John Whitmire repeatedly leaned on his Austin connections after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,2314,392,56,1724,3743,865,287,1564,27,29,293,28,6473],"class_list":{"0":"post-250743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-criminal-justice","10":"tag-greg-abbott","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-john-whitmire","14":"tag-law-enforcement","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-state-government","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-texas-headlines","19":"tag-texas-legislature","20":"tag-texas-news","21":"tag-well-a-homepage"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}