Whitmire Bars HPD From Calling ICE on Traffic Stops After Abbott’s Defeat.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Friday signed an executive order directing the Houston Police Department to stop contacting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during routine, non-jail encounters — including traffic citations — even when an illegal alien has an administrative ICE warrant. He tied the move to Tuesday’s Democratic sweep of Texas statewide offices and said, “elections matter.”

The order lands with Gov. Greg Abbott on his way out after losing to Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, and with President Donald Trump’s second-term deportation agenda still running. It is the same cooperation curb Houston tried in the spring — until Abbott threatened roughly $110 million in state public-safety grants and the city walked it back.

“Elections matter”

Whitmire’s office put out a City of Houston press release Friday announcing the order. In it, the mayor framed the policy as reducing “fear and anxiety” while claiming officers would still call ICE when someone is charged with a new jailable offense, including violent crimes.

“I will take responsibility for making this change, even with the current administration still in office for the next two months,” Whitmire said in the release. “As I’ve said many times, elections matter. I’ve been in contact with the new state leadership and bipartisan members of the Legislature.”

On 𝕏, the Houston Mayor’s Office posted the same message with video of the announcement:

“I have signed an executive order directing HPD to no longer contact ICE for nonviolent offences, helping reduce fear in our communities,” the post said.

What HPD will — and won’t — do

Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz stood with Whitmire and said the department had already issued updated instructions to officers.

“As the mayor stated, the message is clear,” Diaz said in the city’s release. “ICE will only be contacted if someone commits a jailable offense. This means our officers will only contact ICE if someone they arrest also has an administrative ICE warrant.”

“For example, if our police officers pull someone over for a minor traffic infraction and they write a citation, that person receives a citation and goes about their day,” Diaz said. “HPD will no longer contact ICE if they have an administrative warrant and they are not arrested.”

Houston Public Media quoted the order’s operative lines: department personnel “shall contact ICE regarding a person only if that person is already going to jail on new charges or other warrants and has a positive National Crime Information Center (NCIC) hit for an ICE administrative warrant.” Immigration status alone “shall not, by itself, be a basis to contact ICE, to prolong any detention, or to take any person into or hold any person in custody.”

Administrative ICE warrants are issued by immigration officers — not criminal judges — and often flag people with civil violations such as outstanding removal orders. After Trump returned to office, the administration loaded hundreds of thousands of those warrants into the national NCIC database local police use.

The $110 million reverse — then the reverse again

This is not Houston’s first try. In April, Whitmire and City Council moved to curtail HPD’s ICE coordination on civil warrants. Abbott’s Public Safety Office then notified the city it was withdrawing $110 million in public-safety grants for noncompliance with grant terms and Texas’s 2017 Senate Bill 4, which bars local policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Whitmire’s own April 13 statement on the City of Houston site called it “a crisis situation,” linked the state’s notice of noncompliance, and noted Attorney General Ken Paxton had opened an SB 4 investigation. Days later the city amended the ordinance; HPD issued a new directive that both Houston and the Governor’s Office said restored grant compliance — including waiting a “reasonable” time for ICE when officers hit an administrative warrant.

Friday’s order flips that posture again — while Abbott still has about two months left in office, but after Hinojosa’s win removed the political threat Whitmire had cited.

What the city’s own ICE reports show

The April ordinance’s transparency piece survived the walk-back. HPD’s quarterly immigration reports, posted by City Council At-Large Position 4, show officers logged 103 immigration-related NCIC hits/ICE contacts in FY2026 Q4 (April–June) and 88 in FY2027 Q1 (July–September) — 191 contacts across six months. Transfers to ICE custody: 19 in Q4 and 17 in Q1 — 36 handoffs. Those are the city’s numbers, not a press estimate.

Under Friday’s rule, many of the non-arrest contacts that used to trigger an ICE call will not.

DHS pushes back

A DHS spokesperson, responding to Whitmire’s move in comments to Fox News Digital and KHOU, said the department remains “disappointed that sanctuary politicians seek to limit cooperation with ICE,” and that partnerships with local law enforcement are “critical” to arresting criminal illegal aliens. The spokesperson noted seven of the top 10 safest U.S. cities cooperate with ICE, and pointed to recent Houston-area arrests of criminal illegal aliens — including convicted homicide and child-sex offenders — as the kind of cases local cooperation helps finish.

Whitmire cast Friday as “healing.” The sequence is simpler: when Abbott could yank $110 million, Houston cooperated; once voters removed Abbott, Houston limited ICE again — and the mayor said out loud that elections matter.

Bottom line: America’s fourth-largest city just told cops not to call ICE on traffic stops and other non-jail contacts, days after Texas Democrats took the statewide map. Whitmire’s own words — and Abbott’s earlier $110 million hammer — explain the timing.