HOUSTON \u2013 The City of Houston is expecting $114 million in public safety funding to be restored after the Houston Police Department signed off on a revised immigration enforcement ordinance.<\/p>\n
The updated policy gives officers more discretion.<\/p>\n
Under the new ordinance, when an officer pulls someone over and discovers that person is undocumented with a civil immigration warrant, the officer can decide how long to wait for federal agents, like ICE, to take custody.<\/p>\n
That marks a shift from the previous ordinance, which made it clear officers were not required to wait at all. The policy applies only to civil immigration warrants -not criminal warrants.<\/p>\n
The funding in question is used for Houston police overtime, as well as programs targeting human trafficking and DWI enforcement. Texas Governor Greg Abbott froze the money earlier, saying he wanted changes to the ordinance. He also said the funds would be released once law enforcement signed off which has now happened.<\/p>\n
But questions remain about what the changes mean in practice, especially for undocumented individuals.<\/p>\n
Houston City Council passed the amended ordinance, but key players have offered differing interpretations of how it should be applied.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2 reporter Re\u2019Chelle Turner breaks down the new policy. She spoke to the Houston Police Officer\u2019s Union about the changes.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n
If someone is pulled over and only has an ICE administrative (civil) warrant, officers will contact federal authorities to ask if they want to take custody.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re only being detained for the administrative warrant\u2026 we\u2019re going to contact ICE and ask if they want this person,\u201d said Ray Hunt, executive director of the Houston Police Officers\u2019 Union. \u201cIf ICE says it\u2019s going to take five hours, we\u2019re not waiting five hours. We\u2019re going to wait a reasonable amount of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
What qualifies as \u201creasonable\u201d depends on the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell you five minutes is not reasonable,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cIf someone is driving across Houston in rush hour, that\u2019s different than 3 a.m. when they\u2019re nearby. That\u2019s why a supervisor now has to respond and determine what\u2019s reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another key point: this policy applies to everyone \u2014 not just undocumented individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis applies to every traffic stop,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cWe run checks through national and state databases. If there\u2019s a warrant \u2014 whether from ICE, DPS, or another state \u2014 we verify it and ask what that agency wants done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Houston police also emphasize that officers do not ask about immigration status.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re only in the database if you\u2019ve had prior interaction with ICE \u2014 like receiving a notice to appear or a deportation order,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cIf you\u2019ve never had that contact, you\u2019re not in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, concerns remain.<\/p>\n
Not all warrants are the same, and ICE administrative warrants are civil \u2014 not criminal. But they can still appear during routine checks.<\/p>\n
Officers may temporarily detain someone while verifying that information with federal agents, but only for what\u2019s considered a \u201creasonable\u201d amount of time \u2014 a standard that is not clearly defined.<\/p>\n
Immigration attorney Raed Gonzalez says that ambiguity could lead to problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndividuals can be flagged by mistake, or databases may not be updated,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen cases where someone is a legal permanent resident but was still detained for hours because records were wrong. It took time to verify their status before they were released.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that the revised policy is in place, Houston police officers will begin receiving guidance on how to implement the new ordinance in the field.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 The City of Houston is expecting $114 million in public safety funding to be restored after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,98775,58,57,8063,5171,1829,1724,48636,98776,98774,98777],"class_list":{"0":"post-263731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-city-council-ordinance","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-houston-police","13":"tag-hpd","14":"tag-ice","15":"tag-immigration","16":"tag-immigration-enforcement-texas","17":"tag-police-discretion-immigration","18":"tag-texas-governor-abbott-funding","19":"tag-undocumented-immigrants-rights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263731","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=263731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}