More Than 80 Local Law Enforcement Agencies Nationwide Are Now Working Alongside ICE To Ramp Up Deportations

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents continue carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans, ICE agents are now partnering with local law enforcement to increase arrests of undocumented immigrants.

Thanks to the addition of Section 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), ICE has been able to delegate specified immigration officer duties to state and local law enforcement officers, giving them the authority to perform specified functions under the agency's direction and oversight.

The addition of Section 287(g) comes after the obstacles faced by the Trump administration in terms of deportations. In order to fulfill his promise of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, the Trump administration would need to be deporting over 2,700 people every day to reach 1 million in a year. But according to numbers ICE has posted on X, the highest single day total since Trump took office was just 1,100.

With only around 6,000 deportation agents nationwide, ICE would either need increased funding from Congress or greater cooperation from local police if they want to ramp up on deportations. And according to the Texas Observer, some agencies in Texas have already started cooperating.

The Office of the Attorney General, the Smith County Sheriff's Office and the Goliad County Sheriff's Office have all signed agreements with ICE establishing what is known as 287(g) "Task Force Model" agreements. The deals between the federal agency and local law enforcement allows local officers who have received federal training to "perform certain functions of an immigration officer," including the ability to interrogate and arrest without a warrant any person believed to be in the U.S. illegally, execute warrants for immigration violations or to prepare immigration charging documents.

As mentioned in the agency's website, as of March 3, ICE has signed 85 agreements with agencies in nine different states, including Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nevada.

Despite sounding like a new tactic being used by the Trump administration, the 287(g) program is nothing new. The federal government first entered 287(g) agreements in the early 2000s, as immigration enforcement was expanded post 9/11. During Barack Obama's first term, the agreements expanded the cooperation between local and federal agencies until 2012, when lawsuits and federal investigations concerning racial profiling and national controversies ended the task force model.

In 2010, a pair of DHS inspector general reports signaled that most immigrants encountered or arrested through 287(g) programs had committed either minor crimes or traffic infractions.

"This is the Trump administration desperate to meet the goals that it's set to carry out its mass deportation agenda," Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told the Texas Observer. "This is the administration trying to ramp up agreements with local law enforcement agencies to be a force multiplier for mass deportation," Gupta added.