Source: CBSNews.com
As President Trump aims to carry out what he's called "the largest mass deportation in history," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been rapidly expanding a program that deputizes local law enforcement to perform immigration enforcement duties.
As of Thursday afternoon, April 17, there were 456 active 287(g) agreements, or partnerships between ICE and local agencies — more than three times as many as there were in December 2024, according to data on ICE's website. An additional 63 agreements were still pending.
While some of the agreements only grant permission for local law enforcement to ask questions about immigration status at a jail book-in, an increasing number follow what ICE calls a "task force model," giving local authorities the ability to carry out immigration enforcement duties during routine policing, such as during a traffic stop.
Others follow a third model, called the warrant officer model, which gives local law enforcement the ability to execute a federal immigration warrant.
Once a local law enforcement officer identifies an alleged immigration violation, they have the authority to detain the person until ICE takes them into custody, or issue a notice to appear to begin removal proceedings in immigration court, according to the memorandums of agreement between the agencies and ICE.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request from CBS News about the rapid increase in the number of 287(g) agreements.
County and city police departments in 38 states have signed jail or task force agreements with ICE, but nearly half of them are from jurisdictions in Florida. The Florida Sheriff's Association announced in February that all county jails had signed agreements in compliance with a state law enacted in 2022. Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order requiring state agencies to comply as well.
The agreements extend beyond county sheriff's offices or local police departments. Two Florida boards of county commissioners and the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife's Conservation Commission have also signed agreements. At least three Florida universities are also seeking agreements for their campus police departments.
Mr. Trump was open about his desire to use local law enforcement to arrest undocumented immigrants on the campaign trail. Since taking office, his administration has doubled down, facilitating the process for joining the program and recruiting local sheriffs.
"I hope you're all in. All the sheriffs in the room," said Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan at a National Sheriff's Association conference in February. "We need your bed space. We need your 287(g) agreements."
"We're opening up the flood lines," he added.
Homan said that the administration was working to cut down the amount of training time for officers joining the program from four weeks to one, and that they are aiming to provide "full-scale indemnification" to officers who may face legal challenges for immigration enforcement.
Local law enforcement agencies have been participating in the program since 2002. The agreements, named for the section of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that authorizes it, were initially encouraged by the Bush administration after 9/11 as a way to enlist state and local law enforcement agencies in identifying terrorist suspects.
It remained focused on those with criminal records in its first few years, but as the program expanded, particularly during the Obama administration, some local agencies began using the expanded powers to apprehend as many undocumented immigrants as possible. Following legal challenges and accusations of racial profiling, the Obama administration let all task force model agreements expire in 2012 and limited 287(g) enforcement to jail book-ins.
Both the Department of Justice and academics have found that municipalities with 287(g) agreements racially profiled individuals. Researchers at Texas A&M University School of Law analyzed data on 18 million traffic stops and found that in North Carolina and South Carolina, state troopers under 287(g) agreements stopped Hispanic drivers more often than White drivers to funnel them into immigration screening.
Mr. Trump brought the task force model back in his first term in 2017, issuing two executive orders empowering local law enforcement to act as immigration enforcement "to the maximum extent permitted by law" using 287(g) agreements. He issued a similar order on the first day of his second term.
Some states, such as California, New Jersey and Illinois, have sanctuary laws that prevent local jurisdictions from signing 287(g) agreements. Other cities, like Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, have sanctuary policies as well. But those city-level policies only apply to local police departments — if a county sheriff's office signs a 287(g) agreement, that can bypass local laws.
How jurisdictions use their expanded authority under a 287(g) agreement varies. The program can be resource intensive, diverting time and resources from policing other crimes, said Huyen Pham, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law who has studied immigration enforcement. Agencies don't receive any federal funding for participating in the program. Some agencies and officers may prioritize immigration enforcement more than others.
"They're on the local payroll while they're going through these trainings," she said. "When they come back, when they're doing these immigration checks, when they're asking about immigration status, when they're filing these arrest warrants or these notices to appear or transporting immigrants, that's all on the local dime," she said.
Some officers may not want to carry out immigration enforcement for fear of alienating the communities they are responsible for policing, said Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University. The knowledge that local police have the power to act as immigration officials can have a chilling effect on some, he added.
"If you're a victim of domestic violence, and you are Latina or you're an immigrant, sometimes with or without status, and you're in one of these places, you might feel like, oh, there's no way I'm calling the cops," Kocher said. "People [may be] much more reluctant to go to the hospital when they need to go to hospital, or parents are not going to go to parent-teacher conferences if they feel that kind of fear."
