cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/49641042

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.

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“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 Houston Chronicle investigation. “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 (an immigration) warrant is too many.”

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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.

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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, the City Council approved the new ordinance to stop that practice and ordered the quarterly reports on its coordination with ICE.

The city scaled back its ordinance after Gov. Abbott threatened to withdraw $110 million in public safety grants from the city and 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.

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The report comes more than a week after ICE officers shot and killed 52-year-old Houstonian Lorenzo Salgado Araujo 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.