HOUSTON — Houston officials are investigating a lawsuit alleging that police detained a Honduran man for more than two hours before turning him over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the city’s legal department said.
Attorneys for Erick Lopez, 29, filed the lawsuit against the city, alleging that Houston police violated his Fourth Amendment rights during a June traffic stop.
The city said its policies comply with the U.S. Constitution and allow Houston police officers to detain suspects for the time needed to investigate potential state law violations.
“The Constitution permits HPD to detain a suspect for the time it takes to investigate a potential state law violation,” the city legal department said in a prepared statement. “While this may occur within a short amount of time, circumstances will sometimes dictate a lengthier period of time.”
According to the lawsuit, officers stopped Lopez after he allegedly ran a stop sign and held him for about two hours before ICE agents took custody of him.
Lopez’s attorney, Randall Kallinen, said his client had no criminal record and argued that the length of the detention was unreasonable for a traffic stop.
Houston police data shows that traffic stops without an ICE component average about 18 minutes, according to the data cited in the report.
ICE administrative warrants are civil immigration documents and do not independently authorize local police to detain someone.
The lawsuit also challenges the length of time Houston police officers may wait for ICE agents to take custody of people who face civil immigration warrants.
Houston City Council approved an ordinance in April that required officers to hold people only “as long as reasonably necessary to complete the legitimate purpose of the initial stop or investigation.”
The council reversed the change two weeks later after Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to withhold $114 million in state grant funding from Houston.
The police department then returned to its previous “reasonable” wait-time policy, which it has used for most of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Lopez’s lawsuit alleges that officers violated his constitutional protection against unreasonable detention.
The city legal department’s statement marked the city’s first public response since Lopez filed the lawsuit. Houston police directed media inquiries about the case to the city legal department.
