The Houston shooting is just the latest instance of a disturbing trend that continues to play out across the country. And it shows why, when federal agencies deploy lethal force on city streets, city and local governments must not cooperate.
The chilling blueprint for federal immigration enforcement operations was demonstrated earlier this year with “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis, where an unprecedented deployment of 3,000 federal agents — dwarfing the city’s 600-officer police department and essentially occupying the city.
Following the killing of Renée Good, federal authorities simultaneously refused to investigate and completely stonewalled local oversight. The FBI seized Good’s vehicle, blocking local forensic teams from examining it, while the Department of Justice refused to provide investigative files to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
Seventeen days later, a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
These incidents closely resembled prior encounters across the country where DHS accounts were later determined to be false. In October, federal agents shot Carlitos Parias in Los Angeles, accusing him of ramming vehicles; a U.S. District Judge later dismissed the indictment with prejudice due to blatant prosecutorial misconduct. In October, Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez in Chicago under similar claims; a federal judge dismissed those charges after bodycam footage proved the agent had steered his own vehicle into Martinez’s truck. In an earlier incident in Harrisburg, Pa., federal agents relied heavily on the designation of a “weaponized vehicle” — a controversial term that has itself been weaponized by DHS to justify immigration agents’ rampant use of excessive force.
Let’s start with federal immigration agents’ high-risk traffic stops, a common theme of these shootings. This maneuver falls well outside their core purview, and agents are dangerously ill-equipped for it, as evidenced by their frequency of firing upon moving vehicles — a tactic local police heavily restrict.
Constraining these stops would save lives, but that would require either a major DHS policy shift or congressional action. Neither is realistic. The Trump administration won’t curb the practice, and a Republican-controlled Congress continues to acquiesce to the president, locking in, through budget reconciliation, nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in immigration-enforcement funding through the end of Fiscal Year 2029. Federal intervention isn’t likely.
That’s precisely why Houston Mayor John Whitmire should be ordering a city-led investigation.
Local authorities aren’t powerless bystanders. Though state and local governments cannot dictate how federal agents operate within their boundaries, they can limit federal involvement. Like federal officials, state and local officials take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Taking this oath seriously creates a clear tension, as cooperating with federal immigration enforcement has become fundamentally incompatible with the solemn oaths state and local officials take to uphold the Constitution.
When local authorities assist or stand aside for an unaccountable federal apparatus that operates beyond standard police protocols, violates constitutional rights with impunity, and actively evades oversight, they betray their sworn duty to defend their constituents’ constitutional rights.
Local authorities that resist are on strong legal footing. Though the Trump Administration may try to subpoena recalcitrant officials, threaten to withhold federal funds or even remove Customs agents from “sanctuary city airports,” the anti-commandeering doctrine is a cornerstone of American federalism rooted in the Tenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the federal government cannot conscript, coerce or commandeer state and local officials or resources to enforce federal prerogatives like immigration enforcement. The doctrine ensures that state and local governments remain responsive to their own communities rather than serving as an involuntary, uncompensated extension of federal power.
Despite Texas’ history of challenging federal authority, Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a page out of the Trump administration’s playbook in an attempt to restrict the autonomy of Texas municipalities as they attempt to protect their residents from federal overreach.
Local authorities retain the sovereign option to safeguard their communities by immediately withholding local law enforcement personnel, intelligence, facilities and logistical support from federal operations that run afoul of constitutional parameters. Withholding that cooperation is the only way for local officials to stay true to their constitutional oaths.
