Houston to curb ICE cooperation, prioritizing immigrants seen as dangerous after Texas midterms
Houston Mayor John Whitmire said Friday the city will limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, calling it “a new model” of enforcement after Democrats took statewide power in Texas for the first time in decades. The nation’s fourth-largest city will pursue immigrants who “pose a danger,” he said, not people going about family, work and education. A traffic stop for a nonviolent, non-jailable offence will bring a citation or a warning, not contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which he argued would reduce fear and anxiety. The two-page order says Houston police should contact ICE only if someone is arrested on a jailable charge or if ICE issues an administrative warrant signed by a senior official. Being, or being suspected of being, subject to immigration enforcement is not by itself a basis to call ICE, prolong a stop, or hold anyone in custody.
The shift is among the first local curbs on ICE since Tuesday’s midterms, when Governor Greg Abbott, who had aligned Texas with the Trump administration on immigration, lost a bid for a fourth term to Democrat Gina Hinojosa. ICE still relies heavily on local police despite a one-time $75bn congressional infusion, including about 2,600 deputization agreements, many in Texas, a primary target for arrests. In July, ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a Houston traffic stop while reportedly seeking others, rattling Magnolia Park and adding strain to Texas’s housing construction workforce. In October an ICE agent struck a person with a vehicle while pursuing a different suspect whom relatives said had died years earlier; a grand jury indicted officer Mario Alberto Morales for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after prosecutors said he rammed Miguel Parra Hernandez, breaking his leg—an account ICE disputes and prosecutors say video contradicts. ICE did not immediately comment. Cesar Espinosa of Fiel Houston, which has worked with the Parra Hernandez family, said the city council had already decided this months ago and that it was time to follow through.
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