The first report on police-ICE interactions required by the City Council shows Houston transferred 18% of people with immigration-related warrants to ICE custody.
Houston police worked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on at least 103 occasions since April, according to the first report required by the Houston City Council to measure cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
The quarterly immigration report, released Friday, shows that most police encounters with people who had immigration warrants or “consultations” from ICE ended with officers releasing them at the scene: 59 people, or 57%, of the encounters ended that way after immigrants were detained for an average of 39 minutes. Only 19 people, or 18%, were transferred to ICE custody after encounters with Houston police, the report said.
Another 14 people faced new charges and two were transported to hospitals from accident scenes. Nearly half of the interactions between HPD and ICE began with traffic stops by police, while another 17 were at accident scenes. The rest happened after “calls for service” or during investigations or arrests.
“HPD’s average rate of monthly calls to ICE doubled, with more than 100 calls in three months, some detentions lasting nearly two hours, and 19 Houstonians turned over to ICE custody,” said council member Alejandra Salinas, who helped pass the ordinance and said she compared numbers in the report to a previous. “I have since asked HPD Chief Diaz to address Council, explain the increase in calls and detention times, and identify any changes HPD may make in response.
“HPD should be focused on solving crime, not doing the job of ICE,” Salinas added. “Even one Houstonian transferred to ICE custody based on warrant is too many. ”Local police have been increasingly used as a force multiplier during the Trump administration’s mass deportations push.
One of the main ways the federal government has tried to leverage local police is by adding immigration warrants for 700,000 individuals to the National Crime Information Center database, a widely used tool that police use to learn a person’s criminal history, check for arrest warrants and find missing persons among other things. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said partnerships with law enforcement “are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country.
We have had tremendous success when local law enforcement work with us, including 40,000 arrests in Florida and a recent two-week operation in West Virginia that resulted in the arrest of over 650 illegal aliens. ” In March, Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz and Mayor John Whitmire announced a rule ordering local law enforcement to wait 30 minutes for federal agents to arrive at the scene if they encounter people with immigration warrants in the course of their work.
A month later,Attorney General Ken Paxton ’s office launched an investigation, alleging the ordinance violated Senate Bill 4, which bans cities from adopting policies that “materially limit” immigration enforcement.during an operation in Magnolia Park, a predominantly Latino working class neighborhood on the city’s east side. HPD wasn’t involved in that operation, city leaders said. Salgado Araujo was born in Mexico and had started the process to legalize his status, according to his family.
He was shot by an ICE officer on July 7 after picking up fellow workers in his van on their way to a construction job. ICE said an officer fired after Salgado Araujo rammed one of their vehicles and tried to run over the agent. The other three men in the van dispute that account.
No Rain, All Flood — Two People Rescue in Crystal CityMayor Walks Us Through the Damage Along the Sabinal RiverCars in Ditches, RVs Overturned — Kerr County's Flood NightmareRiver shot up — now emergency crews are pleading with holdouts to goResidents Describe the Moment a Tornado Shook Their BuildingOfficers Searched 15 Minutes, Cleared Call — 37 Hours Before Body FoundThink twice before driving through that puddle
Please follow us on Google to support usCriminal Justice Immigration Houston Immigration And Customs Enforcement Texas Legislature
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Houston mayor, police chief ask Texas Rangers for independent investigation into deadly ICE shootingOne week after 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed during an ICE operation in Houston's East End, dozens of residents packed Houston City Hall to demand an independent investigation and greater accountability from local leaders.
Read more »
FBI search warrant alleges drugs found in van involved in Houston ICE shootingIn a warrant to search the van Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was driving when he was fatally shot last week by an ICE agent in Houston, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it has cause to believe there were illegal drugs in the vehicle.
Read more »
103 House Democrats Vote to Cut $3.3B in Funding to Israel, Marking ShiftAs the House voted, Israel continued bombing Gaza, including in an attack that killed two parents and their child.
Read more »
Netflix to Release True Crime Miniseries on the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 Bombing InvestigationNetflix's upcoming miniseries, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, will depict the extensive Scottish police investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil. The six-episode drama, set to premiere on July 30, focuses on the international probe that followed the mid-air explosion that killed 270 people. The series joins another recent dramatization, Peacock's Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, but takes a broader, police-procedural approach to the historic case.
Read more »