Reported by Al Jazeera
People stopped for minor traffic violations will no longer be referred to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The mayor of Houston, the most populous city in the US state of Texas, has ordered the city’s police force to sharply limit its cooperation with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
John Whitmire’s executive order came on Friday, days after Democrats swept statewide offices in the traditionally Republican state.
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According to the order, Houston police will contact ICE only when a person is being arrested for a jailable offence, according to the Reuters news agency.
Whitmire said he had consulted Texas’s newly elected governor, lieutenant governor and comptroller before acting, and that the move was meant to reduce fear and anxiety across the city.
“Elections matter,” Whitmire told reporters. “I do this to begin a healing process,” he said, adding he hoped his executive order would become a model for other Texas cities.
Joining Whitmire at the news conference, Houston Police Chief J Noe Diaz said he supported the change and that his department had already begun to implement the new policy.
Under the new rules, people stopped for minor traffic violations will no longer be referred to ICE simply because they have an administrative immigration warrant.
The decision reverses a policy Whitmire put in place in April under pressure from outgoing Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
Abbott had threatened to withdraw about $110m in state public safety grants, arguing that a city council ordinance limiting police contact with ICE breached Senate Bill 4, a 2017 state law that bars local police from restricting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also sued the mayor, the city council and the police chief over the ordinance.
“We’re taking an interpretation of the law today, working with the newly elected members of the state leadership, in implementing this policy,” Whitmire told reporters. “We don’t want people to worry about their workers, their family members, their students.”
The issue has drawn intense scrutiny in Houston. The Houston Chronicle found that city police contacted ICE at least 107 times in the first…