Overview
- Houston City Council, in a 12–5 vote Wednesday, passed a measure that drops a 30-minute wait for ICE during stops tied to civil immigration warrants and orders quarterly public reports on HPD contacts with the agency.
- HPD leaders told officers to keep following Chief Noe Diaz’s standing rule to wait 30 minutes for ICE on administrative warrants while the department works through policy changes required by the ordinance.
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday he will "absolutely stop" the policy and argued it violates Senate Bill 4, though he did not detail the next step after receiving a complaint from the Harris County GOP chair.
- City Attorney Arturo Michel removed a proposed clause that would have let officers decide whether to call ICE, saying it conflicted with state law, which has renewed council calls to revisit Proposition A rules that let the mayor’s legal team screen items.
- Administrative ICE warrants are civil documents issued by ICE that do not by themselves allow local arrests or longer traffic stops, and past HPD transports to ICE helped drive the change, while SB4 penalties that can include removal from office raise the stakes as Dallas and Austin show different discretion models.