Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include more information on the arrest from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On March 5, Jose Armando Lainez Argueta had just finished buying supplies for his 5-year-old daughter Paula’s birthday party when he was stopped by two Houston Police Department officers. They had noticed a small crack in the lower right side of his windshield, according to his wife Stephanie Diaz.
Lainez Argueta, 40, showed the officers his Salvadoran ID, Diaz said. The officers did not arrest him for any crime. Instead, they called ICE officers who took him into custody. He is now in the Montgomery Processing Center.
“My husband doesn’t deserve to be there,” said Diaz, who is a U.S. citizen. “My husband is not a criminal.”
Lainez Argueta is a hardworking father and husband, Diaz said. When Lainez Argueta is not busy running their construction company, he is usually picking up his daughters from school or cheerleading practice. At a Friday press conference, Diaz asked Houston police to provide answers about their protocol and reasons for collaborating with ICE in her husband’s case.
“They should be clear and tell the truth about what they are doing,” Diaz said.
HPD has previously stated that immigration enforcement falls to federal, not local, authorities. Mayor John Whitmire reassured residents in January that immigration enforcement efforts were not targeting “law-abiding individuals.”
But a recent change in a federal crime database to include 700,000 cases of immigrants with deportation orders appears to have trickled down to Houston’s streets. As fear of Houston area raids and immigration enforcement have heightened under the Trump administration, Houston immigrant rights organizations are pressuring city officials and law enforcement to take a stronger stance.
“When you have a city that has an estimated 600,000 undocumented immigrants, you have to talk about it,” said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of immigrant rights organization FIEL, which held the press conference Friday. “You have to be up front whether your position is on one side or the other.”
Law enforcement and ICE collaboration
Spokespersons for HPD and Houston Police Officers’ Union said that the stop represented business as usual for Houston’s largest law enforcement agency.
Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said that HPD officers continue to operate under a policy that has existed since 2020. The only difference is that they can now see 700,000 ICE warrants that were entered into a national crime database in February.
“We’ve never seen ICE warrants before. They were just never in our system,” Griffith said. “Now the feds have put that into the system. So if we stop somebody and they show an ICE warrant, we have to contact ICE or whatever agency they have the warrant out of.”
Shay Awosiyan, HPD spokesperson, said HPD conducted a traffic stop on Lainez Argueta’s car at the 9600 block of Mesa Drive at 1:25 p.m. on March 5. Awosiyan said that a search of the driver’s information showed a hit for an active ICE warrant, which is issued for civil immigration offenses, not criminal allegations. HPD officers followed department protocol, he said.
“When there’s a warrant, you call the agency and then they’re deciding what they want to do about the situation,” said Awosiyan. “In this case ICE showed up and took custody of this driver.”
According to HPD procedures, officers contact ICE if “a background check … returns a possible hit from ICE regarding a wanted or detained person,” which Awosiyan said happened during Lainez Argueta’s traffic stop.
“HPD does not ask you for your legal immigrant status,” he said. “All it is is there was an active warrant and officers followed through on the warrant, simple as that.”
An ICE spokesperson said that Lainez Argueta failed to depart the country after a judge granted him voluntary departure in March 2006.
“An immigration warrant was issued for his arrest, and he remained at-large as an immigration fugitive until he was arrested,” the ICE spokesperson said. “Lainez Argueta is considered a flight risk and is expected to remain in ICE custody pending his removal from the U.S.”
The Houston Chronicle reported Friday that a recent internal email from HPD instructs officers to call federal authorities whenever someone appears in the system. The Houston Landing could not independently verify this email.
Past statements by HPD have stressed that they will forgo outright cooperation with major ICE enforcement operations, and that they want people to feel secure coming forward to participate in the justice system. But the new arrest has illustrated how police and ICE interact in other ways, and highlights the new perils for undocumented immigrants during day-to-day, mundane interactions with police under the Trump administration.
For FIEL, Houston residents need more clarity on what they say is mixed messaging from HPD, which has claimed cooperation is limited.
“We know that the police can use their discretion and give them a ticket and nothing else,” said Alain Cisneros, FIEL campaigns coordinator. “For us, this [case] is cooperation with ICE.”
For Katy Murdza, Texas regional organizer for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, police should be more proactive in minimizing harm to communities by limiting cooperation with ICE. This includes ending questions about citizenship on law enforcement paperwork, implementing policies that minimize cooperation with ICE, and being transparent about the information they share with ICE.
Other law enforcement agencies across the country have created rules which limit how police respond to requests from ICE.
“We ask for elected officials to put their money where their mouth is,” Murdza said. “We really need strong push back against these anti-immigrant actions from the state and the federal level in terms of not collaborating beyond the absolute minimum.”
‘Miss him a lot’
Diaz said that her phone has been constantly ringing and buzzing with messages from clients of the couple’s construction company asking why he has been detained if he hasn’t committed a crime.
Her husband has lived in the U.S. for 20 years after leaving his town in eastern El Salvador, where he worked in cattle farming from a young age. He continued that work ethic when he got to the U.S., building a company with her. Since he never learned to read or write, Diaz would handle the paperwork and he would liaise with clients and workers.
“Since I met him, he’s the most hardworking man,” Diaz said. “He leaves at 5 a.m to fix roofs, and comes back at 9, 10, 11 when they finish the job.”
Even with a busy work schedule, Lainez Argueta would find time to go to pick up his daughters’ from school and go to their school events and concerts. He also has two other adult sons from a previous marriage.
Although many assume that people married to U.S. citizens can easily legalize their status, the process can take years and require leaving the country if someone entered the U.S. illegally.
The family was planning a birthday party for Paula, who is close with her dad, and they had to continue without him this year. Now, most mornings, Paula asks her mom if her dad gave her a kiss while she was sleeping before he went to work. Her hair has started falling out and she developed a new habit of wetting herself.
His older daughter Guadalupe, 10, said that going to school has been tough since her dad’s detention. Friends and teachers have been asking her why her dad was detained and if he’s a criminal.
“The only thing I wish for is my dad to be here,” Guadalupe said at the press conference Friday. “I just miss him a lot.”
Lainez Argueta has also been a major support system for his wife, who has schizophrenia.
Some of Lainez Argueta’s employees attended the press conference with signs expressing their support for their boss and saying that they are not criminals.
“He always resolves everything. He’s a good dad. He’s a good boss,” said Angelica Cervantes, a family friend who works for the couple. She and all the workers are worried they won’t have a job if Lainez Argueta is deported.
Diaz said that a lawyer is appealing Lainez Argueta’s deportation order while he’s in detention. However, she worried that her husband would sign documents allowing his deportation without understanding since he can’t read or write.
Diaz hoped he would be released to continue running their company and supporting their family.
“They say that they’re coming for criminals. My husband is no criminal,” Diaz said. “I need my husband here.”
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