HOUSTON — The stunning wave of Republican defeats are already having an effect in Texas.

Mayor John Whitmire of Houston said he was directing city police officers Friday to limit their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during traffic stops, bucking a policy imposed on Texas’ largest city by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Under an executive order from the mayor, Houston police officers will no longer alert ICE agents when they encounter a migrant lacking legal status during routine traffic stops or in connection with other low-level infractions.

Instead, officers will only alert ICE in cases where a person has been arrested and is being brought to, or has already arrived at, a county jail.

“If they’re charged with a new crime, we’ll let ICE know as we get them to the jailhouse,” Whitmire said in an interview with The New York Times. “We just are not going to deal with the nonviolent contacts.”

The change in how Houston officers interact with immigration agents was a direct result of Tuesday’s election, Whitmire said. Abbott lost his bid for reelection to what would have been a record fourth term as governor.

“The governor was requiring us to contact ICE,” Whitmire said. “It created a lot of anxiety” among Houston residents.

He added that the shift was “certainly consistent with the new leadership in Austin,” referring to the slate of Democrats elected to every major statewide position in Texas on Tuesday.

“We won’t have new leadership until January,” Whitmire said. “But I’m willing to make a responsible decision that in the next two months, we’re going to go to a more effective policy.”

A spokesperson for Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The change comes as prosecutors in Harris County are pursuing a criminal case against an ICE agent who struck a Mexican construction worker in October with a vehicle in Houston, injuring him. A grand jury indicted the agent, Mario Alberto Morales, late last month.

The county’s prosecutors were also investigating the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed during an encounter in July with ICE agents in Houston.

The Houston police chief, J. Noe Diaz, said he supported the mayor’s order. For his officers, he said, “it’s about treating the people that they come in contact with with dignity and not diminishing their vulnerability because they’re immigrants in our community.”

The mayor’s order described its intent, declaring “law enforcement resources are finite” and are best used by “investigating and deterring violent crime.” The decision was made to maintain “the trust and cooperation of all residents” of the city, the order said.

“The fact that a person is, or is suspected to be, subject to immigration enforcement shall not, by itself, be a basis to contact ICE,” according to the order, reviewed by the Times. “If a person is not otherwise going to jail on new charges or other warrants, Department personnel shall not contact ICE regarding that person.”

In April, Abbott’s office threatened to pull $110 million in public safety funding to Houston, including money for its Police Department, unless the mayor promised to stop enforcing a city ordinance and took steps to repeal it.

The ordinance directed city officers to hold people wanted by ICE no longer than necessary to complete a traffic stop or other brief street encounter.

City Council members who spearheaded the passage of the ordinance said at the time that the directive from Abbott’s office violated the Constitution by requiring officers to detain people beyond the time necessary for a police stop.

Although the ordinance had not been Whitmire’s idea, he voted for it. But after Abbott threatened the funding, he urged the council to adopt new language to comply with the governor’s demands, saying the city needed the state funding for its police and fire departments. The council ultimately complied with the governor.

Abbott lost his race to Gina Hinojosa, a state representative who will be the first Latina governor. Whitmire said that he had not discussed his decision directly with Hinojosa but had spoken with other newly elected Democratic leaders.

As mayor, Whitmire, a moderate Democrat and former longtime member of the state Senate, has argued in the past that confrontations with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement were “counterproductive.” He has also pointed to his relationships with top Republicans in the state Capitol as an asset for the city.

“I had a good relationship with Abbott and the lieutenant governor,” he said in the interview, referring to Dan Patrick, a conservative Republican who also lost Tuesday. “But I have even better relationships with the Democrats.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By J. David Goodman/Antranik Tavitian
c. 2026 The New York Times Company