{"id":255572,"date":"2026-04-18T10:05:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T10:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/255572\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T10:05:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T10:05:21","slug":"greg-abbott-threatens-to-terminate-houston-grants-over-ice-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/255572\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Abbott threatens to terminate Houston grants over ICE rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> is threatening to pull more than $100 million in public safety grants for Houston unless the city repeals an ordinance that established guidelines for local police to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Republican\u2019s threat is potentially catastrophic for Houston \u2014 and more than a little hypocritical in light of his previous rebukes<\/a> of civil rights activists who have called to \u201cdefund the police,\u201d<\/a> a phrase meant to promote reallocating portions of policing budgets to social programs.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the governor sent a letter<\/a> to Houston\u2019s conservative-leaning<\/a> Democratic mayor, John Whitmire, declaring that his office would require repayment of $110 million in state grants unless city officials vowed not to enforce \u2014 and agreed to overturn \u2014 a new ordinance mandating that police officers cannot prolong field encounters, such as traffic stops, longer than necessary when someone has an administrative warrant issued by ICE.<\/p>\n

One might say it seems like a reasonable requirement, considering ICE\u2019s central role in Trump\u2019s racist anti-immigrant crackdown<\/a>, which a federal judge \u2014 a Ronald Reagan appointee, at that \u2014 has compared to the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s roving patrols<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tRecommended<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJa’han Jones<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJa\u2019han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut\u00a0Blog.\t\t<\/p>\n

\"MS<\/p>\n

\u00a9\u00a02026 Versant Media, LLC<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is threatening to pull more than $100 million in public safety grants for Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-255572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255572","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=255572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}