Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas is engaged in a tense face-off with three of his state’s largest cities over how local police officers work with federal immigration agents.
The governor gave the leaders of Houston, Dallas and Austin until Wednesday to amend their policies to his liking, or face losing more than $150 million total in public safety funding, including millions dedicated to providing security at World Cup matches this summer.
Republican state leaders have frequently tried to control the policies of their state’s Democratic cities, often through legislation, and sometimes through lawsuits. But in using critical funding as leverage, some consider this an echo of the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics.
“It’s a play out of President Trump’s playbook,” said Alejandra Salinas, a Houston councilwoman. “He thinks he can bully the city of Houston in the same way.”
Legal experts said the issue at hand — whether officers on the street can hold a person longer than usually permitted if the person is wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — was not settled, and that Mr. Abbott could be testing the bounds of what support the police can provide federal immigration agents.
The fight began in Houston, where this month the City Council passed a new ordinance clarifying when its officers could detain people wanted by immigration agents. Mr. Abbott expanded the fight to Dallas and Austin after he said both had policies that also broke a contract with the state requiring the police to cooperate with immigration agents in exchange for funding.
On Wednesday, the Houston City Council was set to discuss amending the ordinance. Some progressive council members, including Ms. Salinas, have suggested the city take the state to court instead.
“If we roll over, if we continue to allow attacks on local control to go unchecked, it won’t stop here,” said Councilwoman Abbie Kamin, a lawyer who was recently appointed the top attorney for Harris County, which includes Houston.
Mayor John Whitmire, who initially supported the ordinance, has argued for a compromise that would include revisions to the measure, saying the city cannot effectively push back on the governor.
“The person that controls the purse strings can kind of set the rules,” Mr. Whitmire said in an interview before Wednesday’s meeting. “What good would it be for me to be annoyed with the governor and strike back at the governor? I’m trying to get the damn money.”
The attorney general, Ken Paxton, joined the fray last week to file a suit against Houston over its ordinance. And Senator John Cornyn, who is facing a primary challenge from Mr. Paxton, announced legislation that would cut some federal funding from cities that do not cooperate with ICE.
But it was the threats from Mr. Abbott that set off a scramble among city leaders and police officials. In Houston last week, officials said they were evaluating the effect of the looming cuts on things like officer overtime, even as they sought to reassure representatives of FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, that patrons in their city would be safe this summer.
The governor’s rhetoric intensified Monday on social media where he said Houston’s City Council “must choose” between voting for its citizens or for “the criminals who kill them.”
For much of Mr. Trump’s second term, Texas cities have avoided scrutiny over their handling of immigration enforcement, in part because of state laws requiring cooperation with federal immigration agents and prohibiting the creation of so-called sanctuary cities that put limits on such cooperation.
In recent days, each city has approached the threat from Mr. Abbott in its own way.
The mayor of Austin, Kirk Watson, a moderate Democrat, expressed frustration and defiance.
“We don’t have the time and will not play into this political theater,” he said in a statement.
The mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson, a longtime Democrat who became a Republican while in office, has said nothing publicly.
For Mr. Whitmire, a moderate Democrat and former state lawmaker, the political standoff threatens a central promise of his administration: to govern by avoiding polarizing conflicts with Republican state lawmakers and federal leaders.
“I’m not going to be cursing ICE, or challenging ICE, because it doesn’t work,” Mr. Whitmire said in the interview.
The clash in Texas appeared to be over a relatively small number of instances when officers encountered people during routine street or traffic stops who were wanted by ICE.
The Houston Police Department, for example, has recorded around 300 such episodes, according to data provided by Mr. Whitmire’s office. A little more than half of the people stopped were released by the officers. Another 104 were turned over to immigration agents “in the field.” The remaining people were arrested on other charges.
The city’s ordinance, adopted in a 12-to-5 vote, directed officers to release a person, even if they were sought by federal immigration agents, if the purpose of the original stop had already ended. The policy was similar to those other Texas cities, proponents said, and was in response to occasions when Houston officers had improperly held people for immigration agents.
Immigrant rights advocates, council members and legal experts warned that reversing the policy, as Mr. Abbott has demanded, could result in officers violating the Constitution’s prohibitions against illegal searches and seizures.
“I’m not aware of any other state or municipality attempting to mandate arrests solely on the basis of these administrative warrants,” said Lindsay Nash, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, who has written on the history and legality of administrative warrants, which are issued by the agency, not a judge.
If police officers hold a person beyond the time they would otherwise have been released from custody, based solely on administrative warrant, she added, that “violates the Fourth Amendment.”
Mr. Whitmire proposed revised language for the ordinance on Tuesday, adding that officers, in accordance with the Fourth Amendment, could temporarily detain someone beyond the length of the initial stop for “legitimate purposes discovered during the detention.”
A spokesman for Mr. Abbott said the issue was not the Constitution, but rather the contracts the cities signed agreeing to cooperate with ICE in exchange for the funding.
If the cities do not roll back their policies, the governor has warned, the state would take back about $110 million in World Cup safety spending and other grants from Houston, $32 million in grants from Dallas (plus the city’s portion of another $55 million for World Cup security in the area, with games being played in Arlington), and more than $2 million from Austin.
“Enforcement of the contract doesn’t defund police,” Mr. Abbott said in a frustrated middle-of-the-night social media message Sunday. “I signed a law preventing defunding the police.”
That law, Mr. Abbott has argued, would force city leaders to make up any shortfall by using money from their already strained municipal budgets.
J. David Goodman is the Texas bureau chief for The Times, based in Houston.
The post Texas Governor Uses Trump-Style Tactics in Fight With Texas Cities Over ICE appeared first on New York Times.
