Harris County GOP Asks Paxton to Review Houston's ICE Cooperation Ordinance

A traffic stop anywhere in Houston will no longer automatically trigger a 30-minute hold while ICE agents race to the scene — but that change, embedded in a 12-5 City Council vote Wednesday, set off a legal confrontation Friday that could land elected officials in court or strip them of their offices.

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A traffic stop anywhere in Houston will no longer automatically trigger a 30-minute hold while ICE agents race to the scene, but that shift, embedded in a 12-5 City Council vote Wednesday, set off a legal confrontation Friday that could place elected officials at risk of removal from office.

Harris County Republican Party Chairman Cindy Siegel filed a formal complaint with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office over the ordinance, and within hours Paxton declared he would "absolutely stop" the city's implementation. The dispute centers on whether Houston's new policy violates Senate Bill 4, the 2017 state law banning Texas cities from curtailing police cooperation with ICE. That law's penalties are not abstract: fines run up to $25,000 per day, and elected or appointed officials who willfully fail to comply face removal from office.

The ordinance, crafted by Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin, and Edward Pollard, all attorneys, strips out a requirement that Houston Police Department officers notify ICE when they encounter civil immigration warrants during a stop. It also eliminates the 30-minute wait that had required officers to hold individuals for federal agents to arrive. Going forward, an ICE administrative warrant alone, a civil document issued by the agency itself rather than signed by a judge, cannot justify a detention, extended stop, or arrest by HPD. If no crime is suspected, the individual must be released.

What does not change: warrant searches remain mandatory during lawful stops, HPD cooperation with ICE on criminal investigations and criminal warrants continues uninterrupted, and the ordinance adds a new transparency requirement compelling HPD to report how often it contacts the agency.

That distinction anchors the city's legal defense. Houston City Attorney Arturo Michel argued in a series of March memos that restricting officers from holding people on civil immigration warrants alone is not only permissible under SB4, but required by the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable seizures, a position he said the Fifth Circuit supports. Paxton rejected that framing entirely, calling the ordinance "spitting in the face of that law," and his response carried an unmistakable political dimension: the attorney general is roughly one month from a runoff election in his bid to replace retiring Sen. John Cornyn.

Seth Chandler, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said "the stakes are actually very high here" and predicted the conflict would escalate fast. "You now appear to have a definitive decision from the Houston City Council, and you have a statement, at least, by the attorney general that he doesn't find Houston's actions to be permissible under the law," Chandler said. "And so I suspect we're going to see a real fight emerge." He described the matter as "particularly complicated" because of ongoing litigation over the state's immigration laws and the conflicting obligations imposed on HPD officers when they encounter administrative warrants.

The practical consequences land differently depending on who you are. For undocumented residents, the ordinance as written means a broken taillight or expired registration will not extend into an ICE hold through HPD. Immigrant advocates have long argued the 30-minute wait deterred crime victims and witnesses in Houston's immigrant neighborhoods from calling police at all, a dynamic that supporters of the ordinance say ultimately harms public safety broadly. For critics, including the five council members who voted no, Amy Peck, Fred Flickinger, Willie Davis, Mary Nan Huffman, and Twila Carter, the policy signals weakened federal cooperation and creates confusion in the field. If Paxton secures an injunction or files suit, every one of those outcomes reverts to the prior rules while litigation plays out.

Mayor John Whitmire backed the revised version at Wednesday's meeting after withholding support from an earlier draft. "This is a ratification of the good policies that HPD is conducting," he said. "It's an emotional issue. People can disagree."

Whether those policies survive comes down to how aggressively Paxton moves. He can issue a formal legal opinion, seek a state court injunction, or file suit directly, each carrying a different timeline. Given that he sued Harris County as recently as 2025 over its legal aid funding for undocumented immigrants, a rapid legal challenge is well within his established pattern.