Mayor John Whitmire defended the Houston Police Department’s coordination with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the city council meeting on Wednesday, responding to pushback from a council member that was prompted by a news story.
At a conference hosted by political pundit Bill King on Saturday, the Houston Chronicle first reported, Whitmire said, “I’m not going to say that we’re not cooperating with ICE because that’s frankly not true.”
The statements came after Whitmire for months downplayed HPD’s work with ICE after the Chronicle reported Houston police officers called ICE more than 100 times this year to alert the federal agency of encounters with people who had active immigration warrants, compared to nine times in 2024.
“We can strongly disagree with the actions of the federal government, but we’re here to follow the law,” Whitmire said Wednesday. “We’ve been very consistent from day one when I was sworn in — we’re going to follow state and city laws. … When there’s a warrant for someone’s arrest, we have no choice but to submit them to the agency that has the warrant.”
Following the report over the weekend, council member Mario Castillo on Monday announced on social media that he would withhold his district’s funding for HPD overtime until he received “assurances that my council dollars aren’t supporting HPD and ICE coordination.”
“The comment over the weekend that, ‘We’re not not working with ICE,’ it raised a lot of questions,” Castillo said Wednesday. “It brought the anxiety up, and that, to me, was something that jeopardized the public’s trust with law enforcement, and that’s concerning, because we know how vital it is to have public trust with our local law enforcement, which is why I asked for more transparency and clarity around what that meant.”
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Castillo said he “got that clarity” earlier in the meeting on Wednesday. After council member Joaquin Martinez criticized ICE but signaled support for Whitmire and HPD, Whitmire called Houston Police Officers’ Union president Douglas Griffith to the speaker’s podium to explain his understanding of the department’s policies.
Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
“Our policy is that if we have an outstanding warrant, we call,” Griffith said. “Outside of that, we’re not working with ICE.”
Whitmire criticized the reporting and social media discussion of his comments.
“Don’t politicize this,” Whitmire said. “Do not make it part of the social media misrepresentation or the fact that somebody needs to make clickbait out of something. … We are the Houston Police Department. We enforce state and city laws, not immigration, not ICE.”
Even if city officials wanted to end the existing coordination with ICE, city attorney Arturo Michel said, they could be held liable “both civilly and criminally” because of state law throttling cities’ abilities to curtail collaboration with the federal agency.
Council members described ICE’s actions as “disgusting” and “horrific.” Martinez said he feared a “heavier hand of ICE” in Houston.
In a statement provided Friday evening, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said, “Houston City Council members should be grateful to law enforcement for arresting criminal illegal aliens including pedophiles, murderers, rapists, gang members, and terrorists from Houston communities.”
“What ‘erodes public trust’ is allowing criminal illegal aliens to terrorize American citizens,” the spokesperson also wrote. “This is more garbage from sanctuary politicians in Houston who sow lawlessness and encourage violence against law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day to arrest the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”
RELATED: ICE arrests Episcopal priest who reportedly works for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
During the public comment session at the beginning of the city council meeting, Houston resident Adriana Tellez criticized ICE’s actions.
“We have seen mothers and fathers with no warrants, with no criminal records dragged out of their cars in front of their children,” Tellez said. “Trying to provide for their family is not a crime.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated Nov. 15, 2025, to include comment from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Great Job & the Team @ Houston Public Media for sharing this story.
