Sheriffs regain power to meet Trump’s goal of mass deportations

Fulfilling Donald Trump’s wishes to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants is no easy task, and the agency in charge of doing so, ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), lacks the resources to carry it out. Meanwhile the relentless border czar, Tom Homan, has shown dissatisfaction with the pace of arrests and three senior ICE officials have already been demoted for not meeting arrest expectations. The collaboration of local and state security forces is necessary for such an ambitious campaign, and to do so, an old program is being revived that allows local law enforcement agents to perform functions that are normally the remit of federal immigration authorities.

Several Republican states, including Florida and Indiana, have pushed through laws to force their police and sheriffs to cooperate with immigration enforcement through the 287(g) program. Created in 1996, the program allows local officers to question people in custody about their immigration status and to hold them in custody until they are handed over to ICE for deportation. The problem, critics say, is that it gives many officers the opportunity to act out of racism and xenophobia, and arrest mostly Latino and Black individuals, even for minor offenses.

“When local agents conduct raids, they can identify many people who do not have driving licenses and put them in jail, where they will be investigated over their immigration status. Just by arresting them, they are already being criminalized,” explains Adriel Orozco, a lawyer with the American Immigration Council (AIC).

For ICE, this is a good solution, because carrying out raids to arrest people is more expensive and requires more personnel than going directly to prisons and deporting those who have already been arrested. “It is very important for ICE to have agreements with local and state agencies,” says Orozco. According to AIC data, since 2015, only 18% of ICE arrests occurred directly on the street. The remaining 82% were transfers of people who were already in prison.

These agreements create situations in which people who have been arrested for minor crimes and who under normal circumstances would be released, with or without bail, must remain in jail until ICE takes charge of them. And from that point on, being undocumented becomes the crime. In Homan’s eyes, these individuals are subject to deportation from the country. “The moment they go into ICE custody, only the immigration crime matters and they cannot attend court dates to defend their cases,” Orozco explains.

Trump has asserted that his deportation campaign would be limited, at least at first, to criminals, but in just over two weeks of action, half of the arrests have been of migrants with no criminal record. There are between 11 and 13 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and almost 90% have no criminal record. Most of the crimes committed are minor, such as traffic violations or driving under the influence of alcohol, but under the agreements, anyone arrested in these circumstances would remain in prison until they are deported.

Raids on the streets

Currently, the 287(g) program only applies to detainees in jails, but Homan has been in favor of expanding it to allow local law enforcement to make street arrests, like ICE officers. The practice has been used in the past, but President Barack Obama eliminated it after racial discrimination in arrests was found and its application was limited to jails.

In 2011, a Justice Department investigation found that Maricopa County, Arizona, deputies under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio engaged in a pattern of racial profiling. Deputies routinely conducted raids in Hispanic neighborhoods, and Latino drivers were up to nine times more likely to be stopped than other drivers. As a result, the Obama administration terminated the 287(g) agreement with that county.

The Biden administration did not sign any new agreements, but it did not eliminate the program as promised either. As of December 2024, ICE had 287(g) agreements with 135 state or local law enforcement agencies in 21 states, mostly in Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

During his first term, Trump promoted the program and, on his first day back in the White House, on January 20, he ordered that the agreements be expanded. Several states have launched cooperation initiatives with ICE.

The Indiana Senate just approved state funding for 287(g) participants, and it is pending approval in the House. Democratic state Senator Rodney Pol called it “very, very dangerous” and “very, very disturbing,” according to AP. “We’re putting too much strain on people, particularly police officers, who are going to be put in situations where they’re going to have to break up their communities,” Pol said. One fear is that because of a loss of trust in police, migrants will no longer want to cooperate with law enforcement and avoid testifying against defendants or reporting crimes.

Florida lawmakers, meanwhile, have approved a grant program for local agents who help perform functions reserved for federal immigration authorities.

There are two models in operation now. The Jail Enforcement Model (JEM) allows for interrogations of detainees to determine their immigration status. To do so, agents undergo a four-week course. The Warrant Officer (WSO) model authorizes agents to carry out ICE orders, but does not allow them to conduct interrogations. In this case, the training only lasts eight hours. The scant training, far from the training required of ICE agents, which is up to 16 weeks, has drawn additional criticism of the program. In addition, the immigration service does not have the capacity to supervise the performance of local agents.

Inadequate training in the 287(g) program leads to civil rights violations such as racial profiling, false arrests, and more. It can also lead to significant harassment by local law enforcement of the immigrant community, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) said in a report.

Nassau County, on Long Island, New York, announced this month that its police officers will join ICE's mass deportation effort, with an expansion of 287(g). Ten detectives will have the power to arrest and jail people who are under deportation orders, a function reserved for federal immigration agents.

Some counties that had agreements with ICE canceled them because of the high cost, as was the case in Harris County, Texas. ICE pays for the training of local agents, but not for the maintenance of detainees in jails.

To make it easier for sheriffs to cooperate and use their jails, Homan told the National Sheriffs Association this month that he will lower detention standards. “A lot of sheriffs provided us with beds for a long time, but some of them left because they said, ‘We can’t afford your detention standards,’” he said. He added that if local standards are “good enough for an American citizen in your county, they’re good enough for an illegal alien who is detained by us.”

But not everyone wants to cooperate with ICE. Many sheriffs prefer to save available spaces in their jails for real criminals, rather than handing them over to undocumented immigrants for deportation.

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