Austin, TX
Austin Police Department updates procedures after controversial deportation
AUSTIN, Texas — An update to the Austin Police Department’s (APD) procedures outlines that officers are not required to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when a person is found to have an ICE administrative warrant if they have no other arrestable charge.
The update follows a controversial deportation from January, when a woman’s disturbance call to APD led to her detainment, alongside her 5-year-old child, who is a U.S. citizen.
The incident led to questions from the community regarding the way APD is supposed to interact with ICE.
In a March 4 memo, APD Police Chief Lisa Davis said that the directives provided by ICE administrative warrants could be confusing in their wording.
According to Davis, officers have not historically regularly encountered administrative warrants while using the National Crime Information Center database, which is used to conduct identity checks. However, in 2025, federal agencies began entering a large volume of administrative warrants into the system.
According to the memo, administrative warrants are formatted in a way that looks similar to criminal warrants in the system.
The APD General Orders have been updated to clearly define the difference between criminal warrants and ICE administrative warrants, as well as specific instructions for how ICE administrative warrants should be handled moving forward.
“APD recognizes the sensitivity of this issue, not only within our city but across the nation. These policies were updated to provide clarity to our officers, ensure compliance with state law, and maintain officer discretion guided by supervisory oversight and operational consideration,” Davis said in the memo.
The updated procedures instruct officers to contact their supervisor when a person is found to have only an ICE administrative warrant, but no other arrestable criminal charge. From there, the officer or their supervisor may contact ICE, but is not required to.
“Austin Police and City of Austin leadership share a paramount goal for Austin to be a safe city for everyone who lives, works, or visits here,” Davis said in the memo. “We particularly want to ensure that anyone who witnesses or is the victim of a crime feels secure in contacting the police for help.”
According to the memo, the entire APD staff will be required to complete new training regarding these updates.
“In concert with the policy updates, APD is launching a public webpage to help people understand their rights and provide links to resources available from the City of Austin and community organizations, such as Know Your Rights training,” Davis said in the memo. “The webpage will also include information on the option of using APD Victim Services as an alternative to calling 9-1-1, when appropriate, and links to all general orders and policies related to immigration.”
Michael Dorman
Austin, Texas, is revving up to sell $2.35 billion of debt for a convention center and a wastewater treatment plant, while a legal battle continues over bonds to help finance a light rail system.
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The bond boom comes as the city council voted on Thursday to pursue the development of a $390 million baseline general obligation bond package for the November ballot despite a call by Mayor Kirk Watson to wait until 2028.
“I believe we can and we should bring forward significant investments in the future,” he said. “In fact, if we restore compliance with our financial policies and we maintain the discipline we actually will have greater future capacity to do more for this community in 2028.”
A bond election would
The city, which last held a successful GO bond election in 2022 for $350 million of debt for affordable housing, had $1.03 billion of unissued voter-approved GO bond authorization as of the Sept. 30 end of fiscal 2025. Last year,
On Thursday, the city council signed off on a $34.5 million wrongful prosecution and conviction settlement with four individuals to be financed through the sale of non-voter-approved GO bonds.
The council approved up to $1.35 billion of special tax revenue bonds on May 21 for a $1.6 billion project to replace the city’s now-demolished convention center with a facility that will increase rentable event space to 620,000 square feet from 365,000 square feet.
Rich Saskal
The bonds are backed with revenue from certain city hotel occupancy taxes and incremental state tax revenue generated within a project finance zone the city established in 2024. Amounts and timings for issuing the debt are being determined, according to the city, which filed a petition with a Travis County District Court for an expedited validation of the bonds.
An ordinance approved in October
The city also plans to refund hotel occupancy tax-backed debt issued for the prior convention center in order to pledge a 4.5% hotel tax for the upcoming bonds.
“The refunding bonds are a separate, but related item to the expansion bonds and will only be secured by 2% venue HOT,” city documents said. “The 2% venue HOT will not be pledged to the expansion bonds and will cease to be collected upon final maturity or early payoff of (the refunding bonds).”
A petition drive that would have delayed the project fell 494 signatures short of a requirement for 20,000 valid signatures of registered voters, Austin City Clerk Erika Brady determined in November.
Petition backers are appealing a district court’s refusal to force validation in state appellate court after the Texas Supreme Court dismissed
The petition drive by Austin United PAC and others sought a ballot measure to stop the demolition and reconstruction of the convention center for seven years — or until the project was approved by voters — and prioritize city funding for local live music, arts, cultural, and outdoor tourism.
The Austin City Council also approved as much as $1 billion of water and wastewater system revenue bonds last month for the Walnut Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion and enhancement project. The bonds will be used to obtain a direct low-interest loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program.
Other financing sources for the $1.5 billion project are $59 million from the Texas Water Development Board Clean Water State Revolving Fund program and funding from Austin Water.
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The plant, which serves more than 50% of Austin and operates at a treatment capacity of 75 million gallons per day, will have its capacity increased to 100 MGD, helping meet future demand and requirements set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for Austin’s projected growth of 1.5 million by 2040, according to a city statement.
A legal logjam over a light rail system eased May 22 when the Texas Supreme Court finally ruled on a procedural issue related to an initial $150 million of bonds for the project. The high court ordered a Travis County Court judge to decide whether the bonds’ issuer, the Austin Transit Partnership, a nonprofit corporation created by the city and Capital Metro Transportation Authority, has standing to seek court validation for the debt.
City taxpayers who filed a lawsuit in 2023, along with the Texas Attorney General’s Office have been challenging the legality of the bonds, which would be paid off with a portion of Austin’s operation and maintenance property taxes
Escalating costs led ATP to downsize Project Connect to an initial less than 10-mile, 15-station system with a similar price tag. The completion of a federal environmental review in January allowed the project to continue a process
ATP said Project Connect is moving forward with construction scheduled to begin next year.
“We are confident in our case and look forward to our day in court,” ATP said in a statement. “The pending litigation has not slowed our progress advancing Austin light rail, which has hit major milestones in the federal funding process, design, and pre-construction work this year.”
Bill Aleshire, an attorney who filed the taxpayers’ lawsuit, cautioned that several issues remain before the court, including the legality of the downsized project and the ability to pay off bonds with property tax revenue that is supposed to be used for operations.
“Their federal funding is uncertain, their ability to issue bonds is uncertain, and they just stubbornly will not listen to us and say it’s time to pause Project Connect and rethink it, that maybe rail isn’t the best way to go at this time and maybe we can’t afford it at this time,” he said.
AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — Does the state of Texas have too many law enforcement agencies? That was a topic of discussion at a Texas House Committee meeting on May 28, which focused on police standards and policy.
It was comments from TCOLE Deputy Chief TJ Vineyard that drew the attention of unions and lobbying groups representing law enforcement across Texas.
“We’re starting to look now at encouraging the consolidation of agencies,” Vineyard said during the nearly eight-hour-long hearing.
The response was almost immediate from groups representing various aspects of law enforcement.
One social media post on Facebook from the Texas Law Enforcement Association proclaimed concern about the future of smaller departments across the state, despite an exchange later in the hearing between the committee chair, State Representative Cole Hefner, and TCOLE’s Executive Director, Chief Gregory Stevens.
“We’re not taking police off the street?” Hefner asked. “We’re making sure that we have qualified people that are equipped and trained.”
“One hundred percent,” Stevens said.
According to TCOLE’s own numbers, there are more than 2,700 accredited agencies and some 83,000 peace officers.
The chair asked whether 2,700 was a good or bad thing, given that Texas has more agencies than the next four largest states combined.
“There is a lot of duplicative coverage,” Stevens said, “overlapping coverage. When it comes to resources, it can be inefficient.”
Also speaking on the panel was Jennifer Szimanski with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), which also posted on social media about the hearing. While the group wouldn’t comment directly about consolidation, Szimanski told ABC13 that “consolidation is not the legislative intent for TCOLE” and that “we should be forward-looking and raising standards”.
But in a conversation with ABC13, Stevens said targeting smaller departments is not their intent. TCOLE wants every department, regardless of size, to comply with the higher standards implemented in 2023.
“Some of the things that are out there surfing out across social media and on other platforms is that TCOLE wants to shut down small agencies and let sheriff’s offices take over, and that’s absolutely not true. It couldn’t be further from what we’re doing,” Stevens said. “It doesn’t matter about the size of the agencies, and I want to be really clear on that point. TECOL is not out to shut down or to make life hard on a small municipal agency, a school district, police department, or what have you.”
But the larger conversation is not limited to the state of Texas.
Harris County is home to more than 60 agencies. In the last major study on overlap in 2018, Rice University’s Kinder Institute found that consolidation could help address inefficiencies. Kyle Shelton, now at the University of Minnesota, co-authored the report eight years ago.
“It’s really just an opportunity to look at how regional governments, which are often overlapping, best coordinate and collaborate on the services that they’re providing,” Shelton told ABC13.
Whether it’s Harris County or the state of Texas, the cost of funding and maintaining law enforcement agencies is getting more expensive. While consolidation may not be the answer, it is part of a conversation in which Kyle Shelton says governments should be engaging.
“It’s not a quick band-aid to pull off and say, ‘Hey, look, we fixed the budget crisis, or, you know, addressed some efficiencies here in a nice, neat three-month process,” Shelton said. “You know, it likely takes years and a lot of trust building, both with residents and the agencies.”
Texas does have more law enforcement agencies than the next four largest states combined, according to TCOLE.
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AUSTIN, Texas – Pride Month is celebrated each June.
It marks the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that started in late June 1969. The protests are seen as a turning point in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. It inspired marches across the country in the years that followed.
More than a dozen cities and towns across Texas are celebrating with everything from parades to festivals to concerts and more.
A Pride flag is seen held up in a crowd during preparation for a Queer March to the Texas State Capitol on April 15, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
Here’s a look at some of the dates and places Pride events are happening around the Lone Star State this month:
Austin also has a Pride celebration, but it is scheduled for Aug. 22.
The Source: Information in this story came from various sources, including official websites for events. AI was used to help assemble the list of events.
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