Austin police to update general orders regarding ICE following Gov. Abbott's letter

AUSTIN, Texas - The Austin Police Department will be updating its general orders regarding cooperation with ICE and immigration operations.

This move comes a week after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's office threatened to pull $2.5 million in public safety grants.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Gov. Abbott's office threatens to pull $2.5M in grants over Austin's revised ICE policies

What they're saying:

The City announced the change Friday night, saying that the updated orders will clarify that when an officer receives information that a person in their custody is the subject of an ICE administrative warrant, the officer or supervisor "should, when operationally feasible," contact ICE.

The orders also say that officers "shall not take an unreasonable amount of time assisting in these matters."

"My focus — and the focus of every Austin Police officer — remains on public safety and community policing," Chief Lisa Davis said in a release. "Allocating resources in a way that protects public safety is vitally important and these updated General Orders allow for that."

"We must do the job of policing in a practical and reasonable way. 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. We also rely on funding from sources such as state grants to be able to keep Austin safe," said Austin Mayor Kirk Watson.

Watson says that the $2.5 million at stake included grants for:

• Sexual Assault Evidence Testing, which would help the City process hundreds of pieces of sexual assault evidence to identify perpetrators
• General Victims Assistance, which helps victims of violent crime by providing trauma-informed support advocates throughout the legal process
• Violence Against Women Act, which helps process digital evidence quicker, eliminating backlogs
• Violence Against Women Justice and Training Program, which funds a coordinated Sexual Assault Response Team
• Youth Diversion Program, which funds the GO ATX Youth Project, a city-led evidence-based truancy prevention program for students across AISD
• Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, which gives specialized training for APD SWAT and Bomb Squad
• Peace Officers Mental Health program, which funds Austin's First Responder Mental Health Project to help officers who have experienced direct and indirect trauma on the job

"I believe the City was following state requirements and I feel strongly that too often politics overwhelms good policy. 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," added Watson. "The City and State have come to an agreement that the Chief and I believe is practical for our day-to-day policing, will not create undue harm for residents who are the subject of noncriminal, administrative warrants, and preserves important public safety funding."

City councilmembers react

Council members Vanessa Fuentes (District 2), José Velasquez (District 3), Mike Siegel (District 7) and Zo Qadri (District 9) released a joint statement following the announcement:

"When Governor Abbott threatened to strongarm Austin by gutting our victim services and defunding programs for our at-risk youth, the City had a chance to show every Austinite that their government answers to them, not to political threats.

That's not what happened.

Although 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. 

Some key components of our general orders were preserved. Most importantly, Austin is preserving the provisions forbidding officers from detaining anybody based solely on an administrative warrant, as required by the Fourth Amendment.

However, today’s decision to remove officers’ discretion regarding the initial call to ICE will overburden already-scarce police resources and turn local law enforcement into a tool for a fear-driven political agenda.

Months ago, our General Orders were updated carefully, deliberately, and in full compliance with Texas State Law to ensure our officers can serve every Austinite, without compromising public trust or basic constitutional protections.

Abbott's demands ignore this entirely, in an obvious attempt to scapegoat immigrants and distract Texans from skyrocketing costs, crumbling infrastructure, and State leadership that has repeatedly failed its people.

Austinites deserve leaders who have their backs, unconditionally. And we will explore all options in the coming days to reverse this disheartening decision."

The backstory:

In an April 17 letter to Watson, Andrew Friedrichs, executive director of Abbott's Public Safety Office (PSO), says that the revised general orders are in violation of a Feb. 2025 certification from the City Manager "as a condition for receiving any grants from PSO".

At that time, the city manager certified that the city and APD would "participate fully . . . in all aspects of the programs and procedures utilized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security . . . to (1) notify DHS of all information requested by DHS related to illegal aliens in [APD’s] custody; and (2) detain such illegal aliens in accordance with requests by DHS."

In addition to this, the certification asserted that the city of APD did not have or would have any policy that would limit or impede that full participation, says the letter, and that if the city failed to comply at "any time during the certification period", the PSO could terminate any grants made to the city and require repayments.

Austin had until April 23 to confirm if it would repeal the revised orders.

In March, the Austin Police Department revised its General Orders regarding officer cooperation with ICE and immigration operations.

The new orders state that Austin police officers are not authorized to make an arrest or detention based solely on an administrative warrant from ICE. APD officers are also not required to contact ICE or "unreasonably prolong a detention" in order to contact ICE.

The orders now outline the actions an officer will take if they learn that someone in their custody has an ICE administrative warrant versus an ICE detainer request.

The revisions were requested due to the fact that the original policy did not specify the difference between an ICE detainer and an ICE administrative warrant, according to paperwork obtained by FOX 7 Austin.

The changes came after APD contacted ICE regarding a five-year-old and her mother who were taken into custody in the Oak Hill community in January.

At the time, APD said that during the course of officers responding to a disturbance on Blue Stem Trail, officers identified a person with an ICE administrative warrant.

APD notified ICE and federal authorities arrived and took custody of the woman and her child.

Other cities receive similar letters

Dig deeper:

This is not the first letter Gov. Abbott's office has sent out with regard to city ICE policies.

In a letter to the City of Dallas, Abbott says the city stands to lose nearly $90 million in funding if it did not change its ICE cooperation policy. 

In response, the city says they intend to fully comply with all state and federal laws. 

Abbott also sent a similar letter to the City of Houston, saying it would have to pay back $110 million if they did not repeal an April 8 ordinance, specifying that officers cannot hold someone longer or extend a stop to wait for ICE, altering a policy that required officers to give immigration authorities 30 minutes to respond to the scene.

ImmigrationGreg AbbottTexas PoliticsAustinCrime and Public Safety