Greg Abbott Threatens Houston Police Funds Over ICE Ordinance
Greg Abbott Threatens Houston Police Funding Due To ICE Ordinance
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has once again shown he cares more about being the Trump administration’s lapdog than protecting the rights of the people he was elected to represent. On Monday, Abbott threatened to revoke $110 million in public safety funding if the city of Houston didn’t repeal a new ordinance regarding how long officers can hold a suspect who may have an administrative warrant from ICE.
According to the New York Times, Houston’s city council passed the ordinance in a 12-5 vote last Wednesday. The ordinance removes prior guidance that law enforcement must hold a suspect with an ICE warrant for at least 30 minutes to give immigration officials time to arrive. Under the new rule, officers still inform ICE agents that they found the suspect, but are under no requirement to hold them.
“When a lawful traffic stop ends, that individual is free to go — the Fourth Amendment says so,” Abbie Kamin, a Democratic council member who sponsored the ordinance, told the Times.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, a Democrat, didn’t initially support the ordinance, but voted in favor of it as he believed it “affirmed our original policy: Houston enforces state and local law — not federal law, and we are not ICE.” Whitmire has called the potential loss of funding “a crisis situation.”
“The potential loss of state funding poses real challenges for the Houston Police and Fire Departments and will impact public safety services across our city,” the mayor said in a statement. Whitmire added that he “repeatedly warned the ordinance sponsors” about the “legal and financial risks associated with this approach,”
KHOU reports that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation on Friday into whether the ordinance violates state law. The Governor’s Public Safety Office sent the letter threatening to pull the funding, as they believe the ordinance directly contradicts an agreement Whitmire made with the state to secure funding.
From KHOU:
State officials argue that this directly contradicts a certification Whitmire signed in April 2025 as a condition of receiving grant funding. In that agreement, the city pledged to fully cooperate with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including notifying federal authorities about individuals in custody and honoring detention requests.
The letter warns that the ordinance “is in breach” of that certification and “imperils all grant agreements” between the state and the city for fiscal year 2026.
It also sets a deadline of April 20 for Houston to confirm it will not enforce the ordinance and will move to repeal it. Failure to comply could result in the termination of all related grants and require the city to repay the full amount, roughly $110 million, within 30 days.
Kamin pushed back against Abbott’s threats, accusing the Republican governor of “attempting to defund the police.” The Houston City Council will meet this week to discuss the governor’s letter and whether to suspend the ordinance in response.
Considering that Houston is one of the cities hosting the World Cup this summer, the ordinance is honestly probably a good way to prevent any unnecessary drama regarding ICE. I, for one, am not looking forward to the inevitable stories of ICE agents harassing international travelers who are simply here to watch their country play some soccer.
The fact that Abbott would threaten public safety funding on the eve of such a high-profile event shows that he cares more about capitulating to the Trump administration than actually keeping the state safe.
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Greg Abbott Threatens Houston Police Funding Due To ICE Ordinance was originally published on newsone.com
