{"id":251489,"date":"2026-04-15T21:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T21:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/251489\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T21:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T21:22:10","slug":"austin-city-manager-responds-to-texas-ags-ice-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/251489\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin city manager responds to Texas AG’s ICE investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Attorney General Ken\u00a0Paxton is investigating a major Central Texas city<\/a> over its police department’s policy for interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.\u00a0But the city manager told MySA that the policies in question “provide reasonable or necessary assistance” to ICE agents.<\/p>\n

The City of Austin received a letter from Paxton’s office last week informing officials of the investigation, the Austin American-Statesman first reported<\/a>. Paxton’s investigation comes one month after Austin Police Department (APD) Chief Lisa Davis implemented a new policy change that limits how police interact with federal immigration agents. The move\u00a0happened after residents criticized APD earlier this year for an incident where officers called ICE on\u00a0a mother\u00a0who ended up being deported<\/a> with her 5-year-old daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

APD’s new policy, which went into effect in March, prohibits officers from arresting or detaining someone based solely on a noncriminal ICE warrant. While city officials maintain that the policy complies with Texas law, critics argue that it may go against Senate Bill 4, the state\u2019s 2017 law that bans “sanctuary cities” and compels local law enforcement to comply with federal immigration detainers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time, officers notified ICE to comply with\u00a0APD’s policy regarding ICE detainer requests, and eventually federal authorities arrived and took custody of the woman and her child, whose family said was a U.S. citizen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax said in a statement to MySA that the Austin Police Department\u2019s general orders have guided how officers may provide reasonable or necessary assistance to ICE, consistent with Texas Senate Bill 4, since 2017. This year, APD updated its General Orders in response to the influx of over 700,000 ICE administrative warrants to the federal National Criminal Information Center database in early 2025, according to\u00a0Broadnax.<\/p>\n

“The revised General Orders were designed to ensure the City can continue meeting our local public safety needs, provide clarity for our officers, and continue complying with all legal requirements, including the U.S. Constitution and SB4,” Broadnax said. “The revised General Orders create a process for officers who encounter a person with an ICE administrative warrant. It creates mechanisms that allow officers to provide reasonable or necessary assistance to ICE, while taking into consideration other legal constraints and our need to balance limited police resources in real-world situations.”<\/p>\n

He added that these revisions are now in place to help navigate these new administrative warrants and provide specific guidance on how to handle ICE administrative warrants.\u00a0Broadnax concluded his statement on APD’s policy changes by saying that, “we believe our general orders are consistent with SB4 and will cooperate with the Attorney General\u2019s investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

MySA reached out to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office and the Austin Police Department for comment, but did not hear back at the\u00a0time of publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Attorney General Ken\u00a0Paxton is investigating a major Central Texas city over its police department’s policy for interacting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2108,847,86021,820,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-251489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-mysaaustin","9":"tag-mysanews","10":"tag-mysapolitics","11":"tag-mysastaff","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-headlines","14":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251489","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=251489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}