Overview
- APD said Friday it will revise its orders to tell officers they should, when feasible, contact ICE on civil administrative warrants, and it will keep the rule against detaining someone only for that paperwork.
- The governor’s office extended a deadline it set after warning that Austin could lose roughly $2.5 million in public safety grants unless it rolled back limits on police cooperation with ICE.
- State officials cite a February 2025 certification that Austin would fully participate with Homeland Security by sharing information and honoring requests to hold people, and they warned grants could be terminated and repaid.
- Mayor Kirk Watson and Chief Lisa Davis said the update prioritizes urgent calls and bars officers from spending an unreasonable amount of time on ICE matters, but several council members called the change a capitulation and said they will seek to reverse it.
- The dispute sits under Texas’s 2017 SB4 law, as Houston and Dallas face similar pressure and an attorney general probe, and it follows a January case that spurred Austin’s March policy shift to clarify that civil ICE warrants do not justify longer stops.