By Kanishka Singh<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – Houston city officials amended on Wednesday an ordinance that halted cooperation with federal immigration authorities after the Texas \u200cgovernor threatened to withhold $114 million in public safety funds ahead of this summer’s \u200csoccer World Cup matches.<\/p>\n
The ordinance passed this month had restricted police in the largest city in Texas \u200band the fourth most populous in the United States, from detaining those subject to deportation warrants.<\/p>\n
The Houston city council voted 13-4 to pass the amendment, said the office of Democratic Mayor John Whitmire, adding that it would protect $114 million in state funding and reinforce \u200cpeople’s rights against unreasonable detention.<\/p>\n
The 2026 \u2060soccer World Cup is set to begin on June 11 across the United States, Mexico and Canada.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s change dropped an explicit bar \u2060on the practice of giving federal agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency 30 minutes to pick up people named in the warrants.<\/p>\n
The amendment approval was “a step in the \u200bright direction,” \u200ba spokesperson for Republican Governor Greg Abbott \u200btold the Texas Tribune newspaper.<\/p>\n
The amendment \u200calso strikes out a description of ICE’s administrative warrants as being “not reviewed by a neutral magistrate or judge and are not probable cause for a criminal arrest,” the paper added.<\/p>\n
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had filed a lawsuit against the Democratic mayor and city council members over the ordinance.<\/p>\n
Civil rights groups condemned the amendment.<\/p>\n
“Houston city council caved \u200cto the governor’s threats and intimidation,” said Caro \u200bRivera Nelson, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties \u200bUnion (ACLU) of Texas.<\/p>\n
“The effective repeal \u200bof Proposition A is a stain on our state,” she added, \u200creferring to the ordinance.<\/p>\n
ICE has been the \u200bface of a hardline \u200bimmigration crackdown and deportation drive pursued by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Rights groups have condemned the crackdown, saying it has led to violations of \u200bfree speech and due \u200cprocess rights and created an unsafe environment, particularly for minorities.<\/p>\n
Trump casts his actions \u200bas necessary to improve domestic security and curb illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kanishka \u200bSingh in Washington; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – Houston city officials amended on Wednesday an ordinance that halted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,4626,58,57,98236,5130,38303],"class_list":["post-262476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-city-council","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-soccer-world-cup","tag-texas-governor","tag-world-cup-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262476","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=262476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}