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Houston Police Working With ICE
They say their stance hasn’t changed, but officers in the fourth largest U.S. city have been arresting migrants on administrative warrants
In Houston, Texas, several cases of Houston Police Officers (HPD) detaining migrants after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) added more than 700,000 administrative warrants to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) have been reported. Most of these are not criminal but civil warrants not signed by a judge. ICE is also seeking City of Houston data on every motorist cited for not having a driver’s license since 2023.
The NCIC database is how police identify people with warrants for their arrest. Now, local cops across the country can see if an administrative warrant for deportation has been issued against someone — a data point not previously available to local and state police due to immigration falling under the sole responsibility of the federal government. However, after the passage of the Patriot Act, the line that separates federal and state power has been blurred.
The limits of federal and state law enforcement powers are described in the Tenth Amendment, which says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the…
