Police in some Texas cities get a heads up before ICE raids and arrests. Austin is not one of them.
In an interview with The Texas Newsroom, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said they are not warned ahead of time when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to conduct sweeps in city limits. Davis said this lack of communication causes confusion and threatens to create dangerous misunderstandings between local and federal law enforcement agencies.
People who witness ICE arrests have even reported them as assaults or kidnappings, she added, prompting local police to investigate what happened. Davis said APD often only finds out about raids at all because of the public attention they draw.
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office said it also doesn’t hear about impending immigration raids.
“We are not notified, but that's not unusual,” Kristen Dark, senior public information officer for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, said in an interview. “State and federal agencies have no obligation to notify us when they're conducting operations in our jurisdiction.”
There have been several raids in the Austin area this year, including one in East Austin near a construction site that resulted in multiple arrests. Federal and state officers were involved in that raid.
Aggressive public sweeps like this have become a hallmark of the second Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. In some places, local law enforcement has provided support to federal agents to carry out raids. In others, ICE has accused city police of refusing to help.
Notification has been inconsistent nationwide. In June, Los Angeles police said they were not informed ahead of raids in that city. That same month, city and county law enforcement in Omaha, Nebraska, said they were notified, with deputies backing up operations with traffic enforcement.
The Texas Newsroom reached out to police departments and county sheriffs’ offices across the state to learn more about their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Their answers revealed that ICE also provides advance notice to some local agencies in the state, while keeping silent with others.
In the Houston area, the sheriff is "frequently" given advanced notice of large-scale immigration operations “for situation awareness,” Communications Advisor Jason Spencer said in an email. “The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is in frequent communication with our counterparts at all local, state, and federal agencies, including DPS and ICE.”
The Houston Police Department was less open in explaining its relationship with federal immigration officials.
“We do not comment about other agencies' policies,” Spokesperson Shay Awosiyan said. He declined to answer follow-up questions.
El Paso Police Spokesperson Adrian Cisneros said they have “a working partnership” with law enforcement agencies at multiple levels, including ICE, but declined to elaborate. He too said “we're not speaking on behalf of other agencies."
Police and sheriffs’ offices in Bexar and Dallas did not respond to questions.
Some departments coordinate with ICE, which can facilitate communication. Sheriff’s officers in Hays County, for example, actively partnered on a raid earlier this year that led to the arrest of dozens of men and women.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office also partners more closely with federal law enforcement than many of its peers. It is the only one of the five most populous Texas counties to pen a formal agreement, through what’s called the 287(g) program, with ICE to enhance collaboration with state and local law enforcement partners. A sheriff’s office spokesperson said all questions about this coordination should be directed to ICE.
The federal agency did not respond to questions about why some law enforcement agencies were notified about immigration actions and others are not.
The lack of notification may be due in part to a lack of cooperation. Many big city police departments in Texas and elsewhere have preferred to keep the agency at arm’s length.
In Austin, the police chief said officers are required by state law to notify ICE if a background check indicates that a suspect may be in the county without legal status. But she added officers do not typically ask a suspect's immigration status.
“Our priorities are violent crime here in this city, crime prevention,” Davis said. “It’s not about immigration.”
She said while advance notification of big ICE operations would be useful, she does not want Austin police to work more closely with the agency.
“The Hispanic population is one that does not trust law enforcement to begin with,” Davis said.
