City Council reaches compromise with Abbott on ICE policy

The Houston City Council voted 13-4 to amend its controversial ordinance limiting the Houston Police Department’s cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a measure that has thrust the city into a high-stakes standoff with state officials.

The amendment, negotiated between Mayor John Whitmire’s administration and Gov. Greg Abbott’s office over a tense week of back-and-forth, made targeted changes to the original ordinance.

Despite the passage of the amendment, Abbott argued that the council’s vote brought Houston back into compliance with the state contract requiring cooperation with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on paper, but emphasized that the funds will remain frozen until HPD formally agrees to and implements the terms. He added that Houston could lose “more than $100 million” in state public safety funding until HPD responds the “way they’re supposed to” within a day.

“What the city of Houston passed today is an agreement with the governor’s office and the public safety office, good enough to be in compliance with the contract,” Abbott told Click2Houston. “We just need to make sure that the police department goes along with the verbiage that we agreed to in what the city of Houston passed.”

Under the amended ordinance, HPD officers are no longer required to wait 30 minutes for ICE agents to arrive after receiving a civil immigration warrant notification, a provision that remains intact from the original ordinance. The amendment introduces new language that expands the justification for how long officers may hold someone during an encounter. Where the original ordinance said officers could detain an individual “only as long as reasonably necessary” to complete the purpose of a stop, the amended text removes the word “only” and permits detention for “other legitimate purposes discovered during the detention.” The ordinance does not define the legitimate purposes.

Now, ICE administrative warrants, which are not reviewed by a judge and do not constitute probable cause for a criminal arrest, cannot on their own compel HPD officers to hold someone.

The amendment that city council members voted on this week included Whitmire’s suggestion to change the definition of civil immigration warrants by ICE. It struck down this provision from the original ordinance: “ICE administrative warrants are not reviewed by a neutral magistrate or judge and are not probable cause for a criminal arrest,” and instead, said they are “commanding the arrest of an individual either to conduct removal proceedings or for removal.”

It also changes the core provision governing field encounters, removing the word “only” that changes the ordinance to “as long as reasonably necessary” and replacing it with broader language that also permits detention for “other legitimate purposes discovered during the detention”. It says, “HPD will ensure the policy complies with this reasonable standard.”

The original ordinance, spearheaded by Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin, and Edward Pollard under Proposition A, a voter-approved provision allowing any three council members to place items on the agenda, the ordinance eliminated a prior HPD policy requiring officers to wait 30 minutes for ICE agents to respond to civil immigration warrant notifications. It also mandated quarterly public reports to each council member on the use of city resources in immigration enforcement.

That ordinance sparked political turmoil in the city, as Abbott’s office sent Whitmire a letter declaring Houston out of compliance with its state grant agreements and demanding that the ordinance be repealed by April 20 or that $114 million in public safety funds be repaid within 30 days.

All council members, barring Salinas, Kamin, Pollard, and Tiffany Thomas, voted in favor of the amendment.

“We did our best to make the case to counsel,” Salinas told the Defender. “I was very glad to hear the city attorney say that this amendment does not change the underlying ordinance. It is disappointing that Houstonians’ constitutional rights must now be implied and based on an assurance from the city attorney rather than plain black letter law. But this fight isn’t over, and we will use the public transparency that we passed with Proposition A to ensure that Houstonians’ constitutional rights are protected.”

Council member Sallie Alcorn, who chairs the budget and fiscal affairs committee, said that despite her vote in favor of the initial proposal, the city cannot absorb the potential loss of $114 million in public safety funding without “significant consequences.”

“These are not peripheral dollars,” she said. “This funding supports core functions, public safety operations, victim services. If this funding is withdrawn, the city faces two options, reduced services or backfilled fund balance. And if we choose to backfill the fund balance, we come within striking distance of our financial policies, our 7.5%…And if we get that close, that affects our credit rating, that affects our ability to borrow.”

Conservative council members like Fred Flickinger had opposed the ordinance from the start and had commented on the council’s lopsided composition.

Myself and the other members here who are on the more conservative side, are certainly in the minority in this council.

“There are often items that come up that we strongly oppose, yet the majority strongly supports,” he said, adding that Houston holds a similar position in state politics. “The $110 million is an ante. This administration has been able to get half a billion dollars between the state and federal governments. What happens next session when we try to get that money again? We are just shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Bishop James Dixon, president of the Houston NAACP, said the organization supported the original version of the ordinances.

“It was explicit, and it was clear,” he told the Defender. “The language in the amendment does not destroy the original, but it does diminish it because the language is more vague. We’re concerned about that. It leaves a lot to discretion. And because discretion is discretion, it can be dangerous.

The debate inside council chambers

The council meeting leading up to the vote was emotionally charged. Council members on both sides of the vote acknowledged the human stakes of the debate, citing stories of families separated by immigration enforcement and HPD officers stretched thin waiting hours for ICE agents to arrive.

“I believe constitutional rights should be explicit,” Salinas said. “All Governor Abbott’s amendment does is tell us to make those rights implicit. He’s asking us to say, ‘just trust me.’”

“This really comes down to control,” Pollard echoed Salinas. “Who gets to seem as if they are the one that’s putting forth almost the same language? As much as I disagree with the governor on many things, there is no way on earth I think that he would do anything to punish Texas to that degree. The money is frozen for the moment for this political theater.”

Kamin told the Defender the amendment’s language had arrived less than 24 hours before the vote. 

“The bottom line for me is procedurally, we got this language less than 24 hours ago that Abbott handed to the mayor to impose upon the city of Houston,” she said. “The language is far too vague. There are still plenty of outstanding questions, and at the heart of all of this is the obligation and the duty, the right to protect the constitutional rights of all Houstonians, and the rights of Houstonians are not for sale…the governor’s attempt to bully a city that is within its lawful rights to pass rules and ordinances that follow and are within the bounds of the law.”

What was at stake?

Abbott’s funding threats placed grants at risk, including $65 million earmarked for FIFA World Cup security, $21 million in federal funds for high-threat security zones, $16 million for counter-drone operations, and $10 million for equipment, totaling approximately $114 million.

Upon negotiations with the City Council, Abbott extended the deadline to respond to the state’s freeze on public safety grant funding from April 20 to April 22.

The agenda item also included a “no tag,” which meant city council members could not delay the vote by a week. Kamin challenged the order and asked for the tag to be removed on the grounds that it lacked a deadline, but the motion failed on a vote.

How it began: The original ordinance

The conflict traces back to April 8, when the Houston City Council voted 12-5 to pass an ordinance redefining how HPD officers interact with federal immigration agents during traffic stops and field encounters.

Whitmire, who had for months resisted similar efforts to curtail HPD-ICE cooperation, ultimately voted in favor of the measure, saying it “codified” existing department practices.

City Attorney Arturo Michel also certified that the ordinance was lawful.

It marked the first time Proposition A had been used to directly challenge a policy of the Whitmire administration.

Abbott’s threat and the mayor’s reversal

Whitmire, who had cast his vote in favor only days earlier, reversed course when Abbott threatened city funding.

“This is a crisis,” Whitmire said in a statement. “We have already lost state grant funding, which affects the Houston Police and Fire Departments, public safety services across our city, preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and the Department of Homeland Security. Our public safety departments rely on a combination of local, state, and federal resources to operate effectively. We are making significant progress through constructive conversations.”

He also said the policy needed to be corrected and that a council member’s legal opinion “does not matter,” unlike Abbott’s.

“It’s costing us public safety,” he said during a recent council meeting. “It’s costing us our reputation across this state and this nation…We are doing a good job, but we’ve got to have today is a restoration of the $114 million, and then get ready for the next session, not only for resources and money, but we need to get ready to defend the rights of all of our residents…Austin is listening. Austin is watching.”

Abbott’s office also signaled it was examining other Texas cities, and subsequently sent similar funding threats to Austin and Dallas.

The controversy deepened when the Houston Police Officers’ Union withdrew its support for Mayor Whitmire over the ordinance, a significant political blow for a mayor who had cultivated close ties with law enforcement. Union president Douglas Griffith had declared his opposition, storming out of council chambers.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton escalated the pressure further, filing a lawsuit against city officials for “adopting an unlawful ordinance that violates Senate Bill 4 (“SB 4”), which was passed during the 2017 Legislative Session.”

“I will not allow any local official to push sanctuary policies that make our communities less safe,” said Attorney General Paxton earlier. “Under my watch, no Texas city will be a safe harbor for illegals…Houston has no authority to ignore the Constitution and the laws duly enacted by the Legislature.”