At a news conference held by FIEL, Houston's largest immigrant rights group, on Mar. 5, 2025, the family of Jose Argueta said Houston Police turned him over to ICE during a traffic stop.Tanya Babbar/Houston ChronicleHouston police officers are now being told to call federal immigration authorities anytime they come in contact with one of at least 700,000 people listed in a national database over deportation orders. At least one of whom was a man pulled over in Houston for a broken windshield, advocates said.The new guidance came as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials added the names of at least 700,000 people to National Crime Information Center database, a system available to agencies across the country. There are more than 1.4 million people facing active deportation orders nationwide, but local enforcement agencies didn't have access to those administrative warrants until now, experts said.A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department characterized the directive as nothing new, saying officers are required to call other agencies anytime someone’s name shows up with a warrant. The spokesperson said officers don’t ask people their immigration status, but are required to contact other agencies when they find a warrant in the system.Article continues below this adPer an internal email authored by Executive Chief Thomas Hardin, officers are directed to call federal authorities anytime they uncover a hit in the federal system. Officers should then consult with federal authorities on reasonable options, which might include waiting at the scene for ICE agents to arrive, according to the directive.Houston Chronicle LogoMake us a Preferred Source on Google to see more of us when you search.Add Preferred Source"If that is not feasible or offered, our officers will select whatever option does not involve transporting the individual," Hardin wrote. Officers must then document all actions in an offense report, noting using the internal system with a code saying it is an immigration inquiry.Article continues below this adMichelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the Migration Policy Institute, said the Houston Police Department's guidance is in line with what experts have seen nationwide, wherein a local arresting officer is asked to check with federal authorities to determine whether someone might be deportable.Nationwide, more than 1.4 million removal orders haven't been executed, largely because someone wasn't in immigration court when the order was handed down and federal authorities don't know their whereabouts, she said. In other cases, federal authorities do know their location, but can't remove them because their country of origin won't accept their return.It's not yet clear whether the 700,000 cases added to the database are a subset of the 1.4 million unexecuted removal orders, but it seems likely many are, Mittelstadt said.Man in custody after traffic stop over broken windshieldLocal residents say they're already seeing the effects of the directive in Houston. Family members of Jose Armando Laines Argueta said Houston police turned him over to ICE agents during a traffic stop March 5.Article continues below this adTen-year-old Guadalupe broke down in tears as she said she’s struggled to handle a barrage of questions at school in the aftermath of the detainment.“As a kid with your dad being deported, you get asked questions like ‘Is your dad a criminal?’ It’s really hard at school. I wish for my dad to be here. I miss him a lot,” she said. While Houston Mayor John Whitmire said earlier this year Houston Police have not assisted in deportation efforts, Argueta’s wife, Stephanie Diaz, said a city police officer called ICE to the scene when the officer pulled her husband over for a broken windshield. At a news conference held by FIEL, Houston’s largest immigrant rights group, Diaz said her husband was stopped by a police officer at Tidwell and Mesa road in Houston’s Northside on March 5.Diaz said the officer took fingerprints from Argueta and found a deportation record from 2006, when Diaz came to the U.S. to escape gang violence in El Salvador. Article continues below this adAfter the officer called ICE, Diaz said agents arrived at the scene within 10 minutes and took her husband to the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe. Diaz said her husband has no criminal record, and no criminal history was found for him in public records. Houston Police Department spokesperson Shay Awosiyan said when Argueta was stopped, an “active warrant” showed up in his fingerprint search, and the officer called the number on the warrant, which brought ICE agents to the scene to detain Argueta. Awoyisan did not specify what the warrant was for, or if it was a deportation record.Not every city is treating the administrative warrants added to the national database the same as the Houston Police Department. Pittsburgh City Controller Rachael Heisler, for instance, wrote on social media that under current city policy, they wouldn't arrest or detain people based on civil immigration or administrative warrants.The majority of ICE arrests and removals in the U.S. interior come via "custodial arrests," Mittelstadt said. That is, they come through the criminal justice pipeline after being identified by state and local law enforcement as opposed to federal agents going into a community and workplace for an "at-large raid."Article continues below this adCecilia Barnabe, Argueta’s sister, said Argueta didn’t apply for citizenship after 2006 out of fear he would be deported if he tried.“They arrested someone who was hardworking,” she said. “His 10-year-old daughter doesn’t want to go to school anymore because everyone keeps saying her dad got arrested.”Executive Director of FIEL Cesar Espinosa said while police officers do have some of their own discretion, he believes the city and police department have not been clear about what their actual policy toward ICE mass deportation efforts.At the end of January, Whitmire said city police would follow violent offenders regardless of immigration status and that the department had not assisted with federal deportation efforts, which he said only targeted “warranted criminal, violent offenders.”When asked about Arugeta's case, Mary Benton, a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office, said Whitmire has "consistently stated" Houston is not focused on ICE or immigration enforcement, but will hold all violent offenders accountable regardless of their immigration status. Houston City Council member Abbie Kamin questioned how the actions were protecting Houstonians."Local law enforcement’s job is to keep our city safe from dangerous criminals, regardless of their immigration status," she said. "I have full trust in their ability to do so. But if this report is true, a large number of these 'warrants' have nothing to do with public safety. There is a difference between police keeping us safe, and doing Trump’s dirty work on the taxpayer’s dime, standing-in as immigration enforcement to harass and arrest individuals with no criminal background. Our officers are already stretched too thin — this makes Houston less safe and the mayor should reverse this decision immediately (for the non-criminal category).Detainment happening with little informationFollowing a massive deportation effort that descended on Colony Ridge near Houston at the end of February, officials only released details about nine of the over 118 that ICE officials said were arrested. The details for the nine included violent offenses, including sexual assault.“The city says we’re not in that space with ICE, but Houston has so many undocumented people. You have to be up front about your policy,” Espinosa said, estimating the number of undocumented people in Houston to be around 6,000.Espinosa said while FIEL has always strived to maintain good relationships with local law enforcement to keep the immigrant community safe, he worries cases like Argueta will make Houston immigrants fearful to report crimes going forward.Diaz pulled back her 5-year-old daughter's hair to reveal bald spots, and said her daughter has also been having accidents and asking where her father is every day. The day her father was detained, was also her birthday, Diaz said. Her daughter was expecting Argueta to pick her up from school that day, she said.Diaz, who said she is a U.S. citizen but was raised in Mexico, said her father was deported 25 years ago, and she doesn’t want her children to experience the same grief. Diaz said it took her days to find out where husband was, as HPD did not offer her any information, and had no arrest report for her husband. Diaz also said ICE would not return her calls, and her husband cannot read or write in English. In phone calls since they’ve made contact, Diaz said ICE officials have asked him to sign documents at the detention center that he cannot read.Diaz said she and her husband share a roofing business together, and her husband handles the labor portion while she handles the paperwork. Since Argueta was detained, Diaz said, she’s had to let employees go because she cannot handle the workload alone.“People say ICE is only hurting illegals, but it’s hurting family, workers and the fabric of what makes us Americans,” Espinosa said.