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.

The quarterly immigration report, released Friday, shows that most police encounters with people who had immigration warrants or  consultations  from ICE ended with officers releasing them at the scene: 59 people, or 57%, of the encounters ended that way after immigrants were detained for an average of 39 minutes.


Only 19 people, or 18%, were transferred to ICE custody after encounters with Houston police, the report said. Another 14 people faced new charges and two were transported to hospitals from accident scenes.

Nearly all of the people - 91 of 103 - were Hispanic, and six of 10 were men.

Nearly half of the interactions between HPD and ICE began with traffic stops by police, while another 17 were at accident scenes. The rest happened after  calls for service  or during investigations or arrests.

 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. 

HPD declined to comment on the report.

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 da

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