‘Elections Matter’: Houston Mayor Cuts Off Cooperation with ICE in Response to Texas Midterm Landslide

Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Friday announced the city’s police department will limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as part of what he says will be a “new model” of immigration enforcement in the state after Democrats won the governor’s race for the first time in more than 30 years.

Whitmire issued a new executive order directing the Houston Police Department to contact ICE officers only when a person with an administrative ICE warrant is charged with a jailable offense. He said the city will only pursue immigrants “that pose a danger, not those that are going about their family business, work and education.”

“Traffic incident will not even … you write a citation or you warn them and they go about their way. No contact with (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) over nonviolent, non-jailable offenses. It reduces the fear and anxiety.”

The mayor called it “the right thing to do at the right time” and suggested the policy could be “the model for Texas cities.” 

Whitmire had previously been trapped in a political battle over the issue with Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Earlier this year, the mayor supported efforts by a group of Houston city council members to give city police officers discretion over whether or not to contact ICE about civil immigration warrants, and to prohibit them from detaining people for those warrants.

Abbott responded by threatening to rescind more than $110 million in public safety funding, leading Whitmire and the city council members to drop the effort and to require officers to detain immigrants for a “reasonable” amount of time while waiting for ICE agents to respond to warrants.

But now that Abbott has been ousted by Democrat Gina Hinojosa, Whitmire is once again looking to create separation between the city’s police department and federal immigration enforcement operations.

Hinojosa will become the first Democrat to serve as Texas governor in more than 30 years. While Abbott won his reelection bid in 2022 by double digits, the race remained closer-than-expected heading into Election Day thanks in large part to unfavorable headwinds facing the GOP more broadly.

Democratic state legislator James Talarico also prevailed in the state’s Senate race over his scandal-plagued opponent, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, making him the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas since 1994.