After Governor’s $$$ Threat, Houston City Council Has ICEy ‘Upon Further Reflection’ Moment

Eight days ago, I spun the sad tale of the brave resistance story of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hating Houston City Council members. I can only assume they were inspired by the like-mided struggled of their blue, progressive brethren in proggy cities across the country, who were virtue-signaling their opposition to the BAD ORANGE MAN through various rewritten city ordinances and legislative maneuvers.

And, man – were they ever getting some good resistance press playing to the cameras while defending their city’s illegal, expensive, and often criminally-occupied population.

I have no doubt those council members in Texas wanted of that schweet, schweet heroes’ limelight for themselves.

So they whipped up a new couple of paragraph revisions directing the Houston Police Department on how not to cooperate with ICE or federal immigration enforcement in general, held a vote, it passed, and so did the champagne toasts of subversion.

…The mayor there, John Whitmire, a longtime Democrat and former state senator, was proud to join the Houston City Council as they voted to rewrite the #rulez on how the Houston Police Department would be dealing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) from that point forward.

The city council came up with pretty radical policy changes.

“The policy now specifies that HPD officers cannot hold someone longer or extend a stop to wait for ice before officers were required to give immigration authorities 30 minutes to respond”

Full changes include

– HPD officers cannot prolong a traffic stop, investigation or detention to wait for ICE

– An ICE administrative warrant does not justify extending a detention or stop

– Eliminates a policy that required officers to wait up to 30 minutes for ICE to respond to a civil immigration warrant

‘YAY!’ said Mayor Whitmire. ‘We sure told them.’

That warm glow lasted only as long as it took the one thing the other cities blazing similar resistance trails didn’t have to hear about what had just been decided – the Texas governor.

That’s a hard no, Greg Abbott said in his sternly worded letter. Which also contained a ‘consequences for action’ section: repeal the revamped ordinance, or forfeit the city’s $115M in public safety funds the governor froze when he got the news.

The two-second-before-gloating mayor:

Followed by his telling everyone on the council and any news outlet that would listen that he had always told these people this would cause trouble.

The retreat discussion began in earnest.

This past Tuesday, the mayor had banged out enough of a compromise – he hoped – to vote on and get the money spigot turned back on, even though the hardcore radicals on the council were refusing to come along for the ride.

Houston City Council is set to vote on Wednesday on an amendment to a recently passed ordinance governing how Houston Police Department officers interact with federal immigration authorities, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott froze more than $110 million in state public safety funding over the original policy.

The amendment refines language around field encounters, ICE administrative warrants, and reporting requirements for immigration-related police activity.

The original ordinance was passed on April 8 on a 12-5 vote. It clarified that HPD officers may only detain someone as long as reasonably necessary to complete the purpose of a stop, and that ICE administrative warrants alone do not justify prolonging a detention.

The pressure to amend the ordinance grew quickly after Abbott moved to freeze state grant money funding domestic abuse response, human trafficking investigations, homicide units, and public safety preparations for the FIFA World Cup.

Mayor John Whitmire, who voted for the original ordinance after it was revised, urged council members to revise the policy.

On Wednesday, it passed. 

Houston City Council just voted 13–4 to roll back parts of its new immigration policy, with $114 million in state funding on the line.The move, backed by Mayor John Whitmire, reverses key pieces of the ordinance passed just weeks ago. That original policy banned police from holding someone based only on an ICE administrative warrant and got rid of the 30 minute wait for ICE unless there was a criminal warrant. This new version removes that clear rule. Instead, it gives officers broader discretion, allowing detention for other legitimate purposes during a stop and reinforcing cooperation with federal immigration authorities under state law. It also deletes language that said ICE administrative warrants are not signed by a judge and do not establish probable cause.

The city’s not out of the woods just yet, as they haven’t received word from the governor’s office on whether the subtle changes are enough to satisfy his requirements. It seems everyone is reading into them what they want to find, and the word ‘ambiguous’ keeps popping up.

They certainly make the president of the Houston Police Officers Union happy.

…The revision changed the definition of administrative warrants. The original ordinance said they “are not reviewed by a neutral magistrate or judge and are not probable cause for a criminal arrest.” The updated ordinance described them as “commanding the arrest of an individual either to conduct removal proceedings or for removal.”

The change also stripped the word “only” from the original directive that “officers may temporarily detain an individual only as long as reasonably necessary to complete the legitimate purpose of the initial stop or investigation.” And it added the phrase, “and for other legitimate purposes discovered during the detention.”

Even with the revision, the core of the original ordinance remained intact, City Attorney Arturo Michel told Houston Public Media before the vote on Wednesday.

“A person can be detained for the time needed to conduct the state law criminal investigation,” Michel said. “So, in that sense, the original ordinance — that purpose remains the same.”

Michel is wrong, Houston Police Officers’ Union president Douglas Griffith told Houston Public Media after the vote.

“It’ll be more of a case-by-case basis,” Griffith said. “What this does is gives us a reasonable amount of time to determine whether this is someone that ICE wants or they don’t. There will not be a limit on time.”

Under questioning from council member Alejandra Salinas — who spearheaded the original measure and opposed the revision — Mayor John Whitmire said the change allowed officers and their supervisors to consider “the totality” of a situation.

“I think we have language that’s deliberately ambiguous so that it can mean what various groups want it to mean,” said Seth Chandler, professor at the University of Houston Law Center. “The real issue is going to be what actually happens on the ground.”

It’s sad that the governor has to threaten withholding of funds so that local politicians can put American citizens over illegal aliens.

— TheBigO99 (@TheBigO1999) April 23, 2026

According to the governor, the Houston Police Department has yet to signal they’re working within the newly revised revisions.

…Speaking to reporters before a campaign event in Conroe on Wednesday evening, Abbott said the council vote put the city in compliance with the terms of a contract it signed to receive grant funds. 

But the Houston Police Department has not yet implemented the amended policy in its internal documents, and Abbott said HPD “still has not agreed to the terms of what the contract requires.”

“We just need to make sure that the police department goes along with the verbiage that we agreed to and what the city of Houston passed,” Abbott said. “It better happen in the next 24 hours.”

Whitmire’s office and HPD did not immediately return calls seeking a response to Abbott’s comments.  

Meanwhile, the resistance is sulking.

…Council Member Martha Castex-Tatum said she had heard the many residents begging the council to fight back, get creative and stand firm, but she said the risks of doing so were too high.

“You can have real concerns about the constitutional questions here,” she said. “And you can also recognize that the city of Houston cannot responsibly put millions of dollars at risk in a fight that we are not positioned, in my opinion, to win.”

…“All have conditions, all are making a difference,” Whitmire said. “So today we have to decide, do we want to remain strong or not?”

Whitmire said he had begged Salinas to consider the worst case scenario – “which is before us today,” he added – and said Salinas told him the governor wouldn’t intervene.

“I know Abbott, I voted against him more than any living person,” said Whitmire, who served in the Texas Senate from 1983 to 2023. “And quite frankly, y’all played right into his hands.”

“You voted for it,” interrupted Pollard. 

Whitmire boasts of his relationships with state leaders, Pollard added, but “my partners don’t sue me.” Letting the governor control this process, he said, was “a slap in the face.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s not like they have a problem or anything for concerned council members to worry about.

𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐋 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐋𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 — 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐆𝐎𝐕. 𝐀𝐁𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐓 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐙𝐄 $𝟏𝟏𝟎 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐍 𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆

Houston tried to limit cooperation with ICE. Governor… pic.twitter.com/qGNiSnb7Rn

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) April 22, 2026

Now the City Council is scrambling to reverse the policy.

Meanwhile, ICE in Houston just carried out a 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐩 this month:

— 𝟐𝟕𝟕 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 arrested

— 𝟏𝟕 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 among them

— 𝟔 𝐦∗𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐬 among them

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬. 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐠. 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞. 𝐂𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲. 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐠 — $𝟏𝟏𝟎 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲’𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞. 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠.

It’s all copascetic as long as you’re not looking, I guess.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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