Houston City Council passes policy related to HPD involvement with ICE

HOUSTON - Houston City Council passed an ordinance on Wednesday clarifying how local police should interact with federal immigration authorities.

Notably, the policy now specifies that officers cannot hold someone longer or extend a stop to wait for ICE, altering a policy that required officers to give immigration authorities 30 minutes to respond to the scene.

The amended ordinance was filed by Houston City Council members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin, and Edward Pollard. The policy passed 12-5 on Wednesday.

What will the immigration ordinance do?

Previous policy:

In March, Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Police Chief Noe Diaz announced a directive governing how police officers handle federal administrative immigration warrants. Under the rule, if a background check revealed an immigration warrant during a stop, a sergeant must be called to the scene to verify the warrant and oversee the interaction. If a supervisor confirmed that an immigration warrant was valid, ICE agents had 30 minutes to arrive at the scene and take custody. If they did not make it to the scene in that window, the individual must be released. 

What changed:

First, the newly passed ordinance eliminated the 30-minute waiting rule and specifies that a routine stop ends when the lawful reason for the stop ends. The proposal stated, "An ICE administrative warrant is civil in nature and, alone, does not justify a stop, arrest, or continued detention by local law enforcement, like HPD. If independent reasonable suspicion of a criminal offense sufficient to justify arrest or continued detention does not exist, the individual must be released."

Second, the ordinance requires regular public reporting on how often HPD asks about immigration status or contacts federal officials.

Councilmembers against the passage

The five council members who voted against the ordinance gave this statement:

Standing with HPD, we voted against the proposed Proposition A ordinance related to immigration policy and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The passage of this ordinance at today’s council meeting will likely have unintended and harmful consequences for Houston. While we all want policies that promote safety and fairness, we are particularly concerned that placing a national spotlight on our city will create unsafe situations for our community and exacerbate the pressure placed on law enforcement. We believe that this ordinance places onerous and arbitrary reporting requirements which are intended to influence HPD officers into exercising discretion in instances where an inquiry into immigration status may have otherwise occurred. In short, this ordinance will make officers afraid to do their jobs. Additionally, we have serious concerns about the uncertainty this creates for law enforcement. Without clear guidance on timeframes to wait for ICE, it creates confusion for our officers and opens the City of Houston to potential lawsuits. We remain committed to working on solutions that protect our community, uphold the law, and ensure Houston continues to be a safe place for all residents.

City council members discuss ordinance

What they're saying:

During a press conference in March, Salinas and Kamin discussed the city's immigration policy and the ordinance.

"We have filed an ordinance that will empower HPD to focus on keeping families safe and rebuild trust through transparency," said Salinas during a press conference on March 19.

"Police aren’t held to standards beyond state law. That cannot be said about the city of Houston today," Salinas said. "That needs to change and this ordinance does exactly that."

Salinas said the ordinance does not prevent cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.  

"When an officer makes a legal stop, warrant searches are required. This is standard and falls in line with public safety objectives," Kamin said in March. "But what has happened is a rogue federal agency has been taking advantage of this."

"ICE is using and abusing the role of local law enforcement in an attempt to co-op local officers as federal immigration and customs enforcement. That is not their job," said Kamin.

"The Trump Administration is dumping what are called I quote ‘administrative warrants,’ which have no nexus to public safety, into the systems that our local law enforcement departments traditionally use to identify dangerous individuals that have outstanding criminal or judicial warrants," said Kamin.