Texas sues Houston over rule preventing cooperation with ICE

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday sued the city of Houston over its new ordinance preventing Houston police from detaining individuals based on a warrant from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Paxton argued that the ordinance, passed last week, violated state law. The city’s mayor, city council, and chief of police were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The move came days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to terminate roughly $110 million in public safety grants to the city if it did not agree to repeal the ordinance by April 20. The governor later extended that deadline to April 22 after discussions with Houston Mayor John Whitmire, who agreed to hold a city council meeting on the day of the deadline.

Whitmire said Monday that he received notice of Paxton’s plans to sue along with Abbott’s warning about the grants. Although Whitmire voted for the ordinance, he said he repeatedly warned the city council before its passage of the potential legal and financial consequences of its legal approach. He was considering all options to find a solution to what he characterized as a crisis, he said.

What did Paxton argue in his lawsuit? Police officers in Houston, Texas’ largest city, were previously required to contact ICE if they encountered a person with an outstanding immigration warrant. The attorney general argued that the new ordinance violated a state law passed in 2017, which prohibited local entities, including cities, from adopting policies that greatly hindered the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Although Houston was a so-called “home rule” city allowed to make its own rules, it could not contradict state law, Paxton said.

Paxton asked the state district court to permanently repeal the Houston ordinance and legally protect police officers who cooperated with ICE from facing discipline at work. He also asked the court to order the Houston Police Department to change its internal operating policies to match state law.

Dig deeper: Read my report on acting ICE director Todd Lyons’ upcoming resignation.