{"id":261540,"date":"2026-04-22T18:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T18:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/261540\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T18:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T18:52:18","slug":"how-did-my-houston-city-council-member-vote-on-ice-policy-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/261540\/","title":{"rendered":"How did my Houston City Council member vote on ICE policy changes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some council members said the changes will dilute the policy’s effectiveness, and\u00a0questioned how exactly Houston police will implement the amended policy. Others said they feared the financial repercussions of voting no, since Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to pull $114 million in public safety grants<\/a> if the city did not change its policy to his liking.<\/p>\n

The council\u2019s original ICE policy, passed 12-5 two weeks ago, eliminated a prior rule that officers wait 30 minutes for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrive when they encounter someone with a civil immigration warrant.<\/p>\n

Officers may temporarily detain someone “as long as reasonably necessary to complete the legitimate purpose of the initial stop or investigation,” the initial policy said, in keeping with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

The amendments eliminate language stating that a civil immigration warrant alone does not justify an arrest and lets officers to detain individuals not only for the original purpose of a stop, but also for “other legitimate purposes discovered during the detention.”<\/p>\n

“We’ve been consistent, we’ve followed the law, we protected resident’s fourth amendment rights, and we protected the city’s funding,” Mayor John Whitmire said during Wednesday’s council meeting.<\/p>\n

Here’s how the mayor and council members voted:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the vote, Salinas — one of the authors of the original ICE policy — released a statement, saying “the fight is far from over.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“From the beginning, this has been about protecting families, upholding the Constitution, and ensuring our officers are focused on solving crime, not doing the job of ICE,” Salinas said. “That has not changed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some council members said the changes will dilute the policy’s effectiveness, and\u00a0questioned how exactly Houston police will implement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-261540","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\/261540","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=261540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}