Houston’s mayor has ordered the city’s police department to sharply curtail its cooperation with federal immigration officers, in one of the first concrete policy shifts to follow the Democrats’ sweep of statewide offices in Texas this week.
Mayor John Whitmire issued the executive order on Friday, days after voters denied Republican Governor Greg Abbott a fourth term and handed the governorship to Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Whitmire said he had consulted the state’s newly elected governor, lieutenant governor and comptroller before acting, and that the move was intended to “reduce fear and anxiety” across Texas’s most populous city.
Under the new policy, Houston police officers carrying out routine traffic stops or detaining someone for another reason will be barred from alerting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement solely because the person is subject to a civil immigration warrant. Officers will be allowed to notify ICE only if the person is also being arrested and charged with a jailable offence.
“This is the right thing to do at the right time,” Whitmire, a Democrat who voted against the Texas statute banning so-called sanctuary city policies when he was a state senator in 2017, told reporters at a news conference announcing the order. “I do this to begin a healing process,” he added, saying he hoped the executive order would become a model for other Texas cities.
Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz appeared alongside the mayor and said he supported the change, adding that his department had already begun to put the new policy into practice.
The order marks a sharp reversal from earlier this year, when Abbott threatened to withhold state funding after Houston City Council members sought to give officers discretion not to notify ICE in such cases. Faced with the possible loss of at least $110 million in public safety grants, city officials retreated at the time, with Whitmire arguing the city had no choice but to comply.
On Friday, Whitmire said Tuesday’s election results had changed the political equation. He argued the order enforces Senate Bill 4, the 2017 law he once opposed, in line with its supporters’ stated aim of cracking down on criminals who are in the country illegally. “We’re taking an interpretation of the law today, working with the newly elected members of the state leadership, in implementing this policy,” he said. “We don’t want people to worry about their workers, their family members, their students.”
Whitmire also indicated he was no longer concerned about retribution from Abbott’s lame-duck administration. It remained unclear how the midterm results, in which Republicans lost control of Congress, might alter the sweeping immigration enforcement crackdown launched by President Donald Trump after he returned to office nearly two years ago.
The announcement came on the same day Trump promoted his longtime aide Stephen Miller, the architect of his toughest immigration policies, to White House chief of staff.
Sources: Reuters — “Houston mayor curtails police cooperation with ICE, saying ‘elections matter'” (https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/houston-mayor-curtails-police-cooperation-with-ice-saying-elections-matter-2026-11-07/)
