Houston's mayor on Friday ordered the city's police to sharply limit cooperation with federal immigration officers, the first major policy shift by a Texas elected official since Democrats swept the state in Tuesday's midterm elections.
Under the executive order signed by Mayor John Whitmire, Houston police will contact US Immigration and Customs Enforcement only when a person is arrested on a charge that can lead to jail, or when ICE holds a warrant for someone charged with such an offense. People stopped for minor traffic violations or other nonviolent encounters will no longer be referred to immigration officers.
Photo: David Daniel Turner / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
"Elections matter"
"I've said many times, elections matter," Whitmire said as he announced the change, adding that he had consulted Texas's newly elected governor, lieutenant governor and comptroller before acting. "I do this to begin a healing process, reduce fear and anxiety across our community," he said.
Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz said he supported the change and that his department had already begun to implement it. "HPD will no longer contact ICE if they have an administrative warrant and they are not arrested," Diaz said.
Whitmire, a Democrat, said the city would go after immigrants "that pose a danger, not those that are going about their family business, work and education." ICE criticized the mayor over the policy change.
A reversal months in the making
The order reverses a policy Whitmire himself put in place in April, under pressure from outgoing Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who had threatened to withdraw about $110 million in state public safety grants. Abbott argued that a city council ordinance limiting police contact with ICE breached Senate Bill 4, a 2017 state law that bars local police from restricting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The state attorney general's office had also opened an investigation under the law.
The April policy required officers to call a federal support center and a sergeant whenever a background check turned up a civil immigration warrant — and the number of referrals soared. The Houston Chronicle found that city police contacted ICE at least 107 times in the first eight months of 2025.
Whitmire said his new order enforces Senate Bill 4 in line with its supporters' stated goal: cracking down on criminals who are in the country illegally, rather than on people stopped for minor offenses.
The midterm wave reaches city hall
The shift is one of the first concrete consequences of the Democrats' rout in Texas on Tuesday. Voters swept Democrats into every statewide office, including Gina Hinojosa, who ousted Abbott to become the state's first Latina governor and the first Democrat to hold the office in more than 30 years, and James Talarico, who defeated Ken Paxton in the Senate race to become the first Democrat elected to a Texas Senate seat since 1988.
Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, has been a flashpoint in the Trump administration's mass deportation drive. The city has seen repeated protests after an ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican homebuilder, and last week a grand jury indicted an ICE officer who struck a man with a vehicle, on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. ICE has denied that the officer intentionally struck Miguel Parra Hernandez, whose leg was broken.
Despite a $75 billion infusion from Congress, ICE remains heavily dependent on local police to find people subject to deportation and turn them over, and Texas has been a primary target for arrests. Houston's decision cuts off one of the largest of those pipelines — and other Democratic-led Texas cities will now be watched for whether they follow.
Whether the order survives is an open question. State officials could challenge it under Senate Bill 4 or tie it to public safety grants, setting up a legal fight between the new Democratic state leadership and the outgoing Republican administration's rules. For now, though, Houston police have new instructions: write the citation, issue the warning, and let people go about their way.
Sources: Reuters; Associated Press; Al Jazeera; USA Today.