Houston Mayor Whitmire Signs Order Limiting Police Contact With ICE to Jailable Arrests, Days After Abbott Loses

Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed an executive order Friday limiting police cooperation with ICE, days after Gov. Greg Abbott lost reelection, Axios Houston reported. Under the directive, Houston police will contact ICE only when someone is being arrested on a jailable offense. “HPD will no longer contact ICE if they have an administrative warrant and they are not arrested,” Police Chief Noe Diaz said. Under the previous policy, officers were instructed to wait a “reasonable amount of time” for federal agents to respond. Whitmire said he did it to “reduce fear and anxiety across our community,” and told reporters: “Elections matter.” Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The AP called the move by the nation’s fourth-largest city one of the first steps to curb ICE’s powers since Tuesday’s election. Axios reports Whitmire had repeatedly resisted restricting HPD’s ICE interactions, citing the risk of angering Abbott and jeopardizing state funding. The change comes four months after an ICE agent shot and killed a longtime Houston resident (2026-07-07–ice-kills-lorenzo-salgado-araujo-houston-narrative-collapse); see also 2026-10-10–ice-agent-strikes-miguel-parra-hernandez-with-vehicle-houston-pursuit.