If you get pulled over in Houston for a broken taillight and you have an immigration warrant, police will now write you a ticket and let you go. Mayor John Whitmire signed an executive order Friday telling Houston police to contact ICE only when someone is arrested for a jailable offense, the Texas Tribune reported.
“I do this to begin a healing process, reduce fear and anxiety across our community,” Whitmire said at a Friday news conference. “I also do this knowing that elections matter.”
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What changes for Houston police?
The key is the difference between two kinds of warrants. A criminal warrant is signed by a judge. An administrative ICE warrant is issued by immigration officials and often covers civil matters, like an old deportation order. The Trump administration has added more than 700,000 of those administrative warrants to a national criminal database, so they pop up when an officer runs a name.
Until now, Houston officers who found one were told to call ICE and wait a “reasonable” time for agents. Now they won’t. “If our police officers pull someone over for a minor traffic infraction and they write a citation, that person receives the citation and goes about their day,” said Police Chief J. Noe Diaz. “HPD will no longer contact ICE if they have an administrative warrant and they are not arrested.” Nonviolent cases get cite and release.
That matters because calls to ICE had exploded. A Houston Chronicle investigation found HPD contacted ICE at least 107 times in the first eight months of 2025, compared to nine times in all of 2024. In one case, a woman who called police to report domestic violence had an ICE warrant, and the officer called ICE on her.
Why now, and will Texas push back?
Whitmire said it himself: elections. Democrats did well in Texas on Tuesday, and Gov. Greg Abbott lost to Gina Hinojosa, who has criticized his immigration policies. City Controller Chris Hollins called the order “a promising first step” and didn’t let the mayor off easy. “ICE killing a man in our city and running over another wasn’t enough to move the mayor,” he said. “I’m glad an election was.” That’s a reference to the July 7 fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an immigration agent and a separate case in which an ICE agent was indicted for hitting a man with an SUV.
The fight isn’t over. Texas’s 2017 law, Senate Bill 4, makes it illegal for police departments to limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. When Houston loosened a smaller rule in April, Abbott threatened to pull about $110 million in state public safety grants, and the city backed off. Abbott is still governor until January, and his office didn’t respond to the Tribune. Austin and San Antonio are now looking at similar changes. It’s the latest fight over federal immigration tactics, after a judge last month ordered DHS to stop knocking on doors to hunt for noncitizen voters.
The BeezLoop Take
Sending ICE after a woman who called 911 about domestic violence doesn’t make anyone safer. It teaches a whole community not to call. Police chiefs have argued this for years, and Houston’s own numbers show how far the city drifted from it.
Hollins has a point too. Whitmire waited until after an election to do what he could have done after a man was killed. Leaders who discover their convictions when the polls shift shouldn’t expect much credit for it.
The open question: does Abbott use his last two months in office to fight this under SB 4, and will a new governor in January decide the state should stop fighting it?
Sources: Texas Tribune · FOX 26 Houston (video)
