Austin Mayor Asks Police to Revise the ICE Warrant Policy as Houston Limits Its Own Cooperation
Mayor Kirk Watson has asked city officials to revise the Austin Police Department's general orders on ICE warrants — the same week Houston's mayor signed an executive order limiting when his officers contact ICE, and days after the statewide election changed who will hold power in January.
AUSTIN — Austin is reopening one of its hardest-running arguments: how far the city's own police officers should go in cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. Mayor Kirk Watson has formally requested revisions to the Austin Police Department's general orders governing cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asking Police Chief Lisa Davis and the City Manager to finalize updates before new state leadership takes office in January, CBS Austin reported.
The Austin move landed the same week Houston acted by signature. Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed an executive order on Friday sharply limiting his police department's cooperation with ICE: under the order, Houston officers contact ICE only when a person is being arrested for a jailable offence, rather than referring people stopped in routine encounters who carry an administrative immigration warrant, Reuters reported. Mayors in Austin, Houston and San Antonio all discussed changes to local cooperation in the days after Tuesday's statewide Democratic sweep.
Watson's stated reasoning, as reported from his official statement, is that the change in state leadership should let the city partner with the state without threats and undue pressure on local decisions, including decisions related to civil immigration enforcement. That pressure is not hypothetical in Austin: earlier this year the city revised its general orders to give officers more discretion in administrative-warrant cases, then rolled the change back within weeks after the governor's office threatened to pull $2.5 million in public safety grants.
For now, the revision itself is still paper. As of this weekend the proposed changes were under review by the city attorney, and officials indicated the adjustments would likely be limited to wording rather than an operational overhaul, with the finalized directives expected before the end of the year. What those words say — and whether the January transition changes the funding math that decided the last round — is the story Austin will be reading when the new orders publish.
