Houston Amends ICE Cooperation Ordinance After Funding Threat

The Houston City Council voted 13-4 on Wednesday to amend a recent ordinance that had limited local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities, following threats from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to withhold more than $114 million in public safety grants.

The original ordinance, approved on April 8, directed Houston police officers to detain individuals only as long as reasonably necessary during field encounters, such as traffic stops, and not to prolong stops solely based on civil administrative warrants issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It removed a prior policy requiring officers to wait 30 minutes for ICE agents to arrive and emphasized that such warrants, which are not reviewed by a judge, do not provide probable cause for arrest or extended detention by local law enforcement. The measure aimed to align with the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable seizures, as affirmed in Supreme Court rulings like Rodriguez v. United States, which prohibit extending stops beyond their original purpose without additional justification.

Abbott's administration argued that the ordinance violated state law and the terms of public safety...