County jails operating as detention centers: A gray zone that has expanded under Trump

Across the United States, local law enforcement agencies have partnered with the Trump administration in its campaign of mass detentions and deportations at a record pace. These partnerships, also known as 287(g) agreements, grant local law enforcement institutions — such as police departments and county jails — the power to both hold and transport people to and from ICE-approved detention facilities while they, in turn, benefit financially from it. Since June, the number of 287(g) agreements has increased from 649 to over 1,000 in 40 states, according to a press release from September 17. However, the official figure does not include all the agreements the immigration agency has reached with local entities.

By comparing the list of detention centers on the immigration agency’s website with an index of county jails and sheriff’s offices that have 287(g) agreements, EL PAÍS found that, nationwide, there are more than 500 local facilities that are not recognized as formal detention centers on the ICE website, even though they operate as such.

“ICE does not release a complete list of the detention facilities that it uses,” said Dr. Susan Long, cofounder of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an organization that makes immigration data available to the public. The agency “suppresses quite a large number of them under a variety of guises,” the expert added.

There are multiple types of agreements that local and county law enforcement agencies can enter into with ICE, Long explained. The 287(g) is just one of them: a program created in 1996 and revived en masse by the Trump administration, which redirects resources and space in local taxpayer-funded facilities to detain immigrants. Many of these detainees come from other states or have no criminal record.

Detention center contracts are slightly different from 287(g) agreements, which deputize local officers to assist with immigration detention. Under some 287(g) agreements, a law enforcement officer can take someone into custody, alert ICE, and temporarily keep the individual there until immigration agents arrive. While 287(g) gives officers more detention flexibility and allows them to take people into custody if they think that the person is undocumented, regardless of whether they have committed a crime, a detention center contract formalizes the per diem payments that county jails receive for holding ICE detainees and designate the amount of time jails can retain these prisoners.

As a result, there are 500 county institutions with 287(g) agreements with ICE that are not recognized as formal detention centers, though local officers have the ability to bring immigrants into custody there.

These agreements classify county facilities by how long they can hold ICE detainees, Long noted. Some are authorized to hold people in custody long term, while others cannot hold them for more than 72 hours. According to the researcher, jails that agree to hold migrants for under three days have fewer reporting requirements, and are less likely to be listed on the ICE website as a formal detention center.

It is nearly impossible to figure out how many county facilities are designated as short-term detention centers, as they are not made public. Long’s team at TRAC, which has been attempting to obtain these agreements through public records requests, often hits a dead end, as they are withheld under a provision of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that exempts agencies from disclosing confidential or privileged commercial or financial information.

The lack of information also concerns the TRAC cofounder for reasons beyond transparency. Long-term facilities have higher quality-of-life requirements than short-term. For example, long-term facilities are often required to have medical staff, in case of an emergency.

Covert detention centers in already overcrowded prisons

At a March 4 fiscal court meeting in Oldham County, Kentucky, a city northwest of Louisville, county jailer Jeff Tindall presented a seemingly simple request: the approval to purchase two new vehicles, a van and a bus. The prison’s transportation resources were no longer sufficient, Tindall explained. Together, the vehicles would cost an estimated $238,000 and would be used for trips to states like Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, and Kansas.

In a conservative state like Kentucky, it seemed unlikely that community members would be troubled by Tindall’s request. But one month later, Michael Slider, executive director of Kentucky Citizens for Democracy, a local anti-authoritarianism grassroots group, appeared before the fiscal court. He clutched a packet of papers as he strode up to the podium. “We have quite the money making operation going on here,” Slider said, pointing out that the Oldham County jail makes $73 per day for each immigrant housed there. “I thought we pay their salaries to serve the citizens of Oldham County, not run an ICE taxi service. Who decided this was how our resources were going to be used?” he asked.

Slider and his wife recently founded Kentucky Citizens for Democracy after President Trump’s reelection. They had never heard of 287(g) or a detention center contract. Slider came across the program — and Oldham County’s participation in it — in a news article. “I had no idea what a 287(g) was,” he recalled, “So I went and talked to the sheriff.” He discovered that the county jailer had signed off on the agreement.

Oldham County is one of 31 jails or other local law enforcement agencies listed on the ICE website as an official detention center. However, other facilities have not been described with such transparency. In Kenton County, just south of Kentucky’s border with Ohio, another local jail has some of the same functions as an immigration processing center, but is not listed on the ICE website.

In the state of Iowa, in Woodbury County Jail, nearly half of the jail’s August population from August arrests were immigrants. This prison is also not listed as a detention center on the ICE website, nor does it have a 287(g) agreement. Some states, like Florida, have hundreds of these public agreements at the state, county, local, and even university police level. The hundreds of agreements between ICE and law enforcement agencies across the United States operate under divergent terms, demonstrating the lack of transparency around how these smaller institutions facilitate the federal government’s immigration agenda.

Slider, the activist from Kentucky, is especially furious about those prisons in his home state that accept immigrants and federal prisoners, despite already being overcrowded. Kenton County Jail, for example, had a prisoner population that was 50 people over the facility’s capacity during the week of September 18.

Slider says he has faced resistance in campaigning for prisoners rights in a red state, even if they have not committed a crime. He has received a barrage of criticism on social media. “But that’s not going to stop us,” the local activist declared. “We’ve got a voice, we’re going to use it.”

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