The Austin Police Department will adjust its rules on how officers engage with federal immigration authorities after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to block the city from receiving state grant funding.
Earlier this year, APD released new rules for how officers interact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under those rules, an officer had to first clear any communication with ICE with a supervisor if an individual had a civil administrative warrant — a noncriminal charge. Austin officers are required to communicate with ICE if a suspect is facing criminal charges.
Now, the rules will be updated to clarify that if someone has an ICE administrative warrant, the officer or supervisor "should, when operationally feasible," contact ICE.
Officers should consider urgent public safety needs in the city first, and whether they are needed elsewhere, the city said. The orders also clarify "officers shall not take an unreasonable amount of time assisting in these matters."
Last week, Abbott threatened to pull $2.5 million in state grants from Austin over its rules on how police cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Houston and Dallas are facing similar threats from the governor.
Abbott said restricting any notification to ICE agents could be in breach of the grant agreements the city entered into.
Just a few days before, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he had launched an investigation into APD's policies over the same concern.
'Too often politics overwhelms good policy,' Mayor Watson says
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said public safety and community policing are the main focus. "Allocating resources in a way that protects public safety is vitally important and these updated General Orders allow for that," she said in a written statement.
Mayor Kirk Watson said the new rules were a rational approach that maximized APD's limited resources to adequately address Austin's public safety needs.
"We must do the job of policing in a practical and reasonable way," Watson said in a statement. "We do not have the time or resources to engage in activities that pull officers away from needed work and create inefficiencies. That is how we keep Austin safe."
He acknowledged that the city relies on funding from sources such as state grants to be able to keep Austin safe.
"I believe the City was following state requirements and I feel strongly that too often politics overwhelms good policy," Watson said. "The threatened loss of these grants would have meant the loss of important public safety services for people we want protected. We have an obligation to them."
But not all city leaders agree with the changes.
Council members hope to reverse city's decision
In a joint statement, Austin City Council members Vanessa Fuentes, José Velásquez, Mike Siegel and Zo Qadri said "while the city held firm on some core principles, City management capitulated to the Governor's unreasonable demand to change our general orders and tamper with APD officers' lawful discretion to choose not to call ICE when they encounter a non-judicial administrative ICE warrant."
They said the move would overburden already-scarce police resources and fuel a "fear-driven political agenda."
In the coming days, the council members said they plan to explore all options "to reverse this disheartening decision."
The grants the city faced losing include those that provide mental health resources for police officers, support sexual assault survivors, improve the ability to respond to violent crimes against women, and work to protect the city's cybersecurity.
Last year, more than 700,000 noncriminal, administrative warrants were added to the National Crime Information Center database. It's a system used by police to exchange crime data across the country.
Austin city leaders said those additions created confusion for officers, and the rules were updated to give them a better understanding of how to handle those administrative warrants.
State law, passed in 2017, prohibits Texas cities from creating policies that stop officers from calling ICE. But local police departments can choose not to put police resources toward immigration enforcement if it interferes with their other work.
Copyright 2026 KUT News