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In addition to <\/span>deploying tens of thousands<\/a> of federal agents from across the federal government to carry out his deportation agenda, President Donald Trump is rapidly expanding the network of state and local police going after immigrants through partnerships with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n The aggressive, nationwide law enforcement regime, all taking place under orders from the White House, amounts to what scholars, attorneys, and now a federal judge say are steps toward the creation of a national police force. And the ranks of ICE partners won\u2019t be filled with just local cops: In at least three states, the administration is joining forces with agencies typically tasked with environmental and marine protection, lottery control, and gaming to target immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is quite a common tactic,\u201d said Charis Kubrin, a professor at the University of California, Irvine who studies immigration and crime. \u201dThere\u2019s this idea that we\u2019re going to get local, not just police officers, but nurses and teachers and other public officials involved in enforcing immigration laws.\u201d<\/p>\n It started largely with immigration, using federal agents and a little-remarked-upon program known as 287(g) to funnel funding to local law enforcement for partnerships. The widespread ICE incursions and local police partnerships, however, have also been justified by the myth of an immigrant crime wave.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on public safety.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThere is this moral panic now about migrant crime. This is rhetoric that is at odds generally with what we know about immigration and crime,\u201d Kubrin said. \u201cThe research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on public safety whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t really need this increased cooperation,\u201d she said. \u201cThe foundational assumption of this widespread immigrant criminality upon which all of these policies and practices are based, is patently not true.\u201d<\/p>\n Recruiting and paying local police to do immigration work, however, is just one part of the bigger project of creating such a national police force, said the American Civil Liberties Union\u2019s Naureen Shah. And critics are worried that with Trump\u2019s willingness to leverage state power for his own ends, such a security force could become a tool for carrying out the president\u2019s political agenda.<\/p>\n Shah, who leads the ACLU\u2019s policy and advocacy work on immigration, said, \u201cTheir larger project is to blur the lines between different law enforcement agencies in the military and create one national police force that is essentially under the command of the president.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n By funneling money to local police to do immigration work that falls under the federal government\u2019s purview, Trump is effectively bolstering a police force answerable to his own authority by slowly buying up state and local police on a massive scale. The administration announced last month that 1,000 agencies had partnered with ICE to help target people for deportation.<\/p>\n The money is coming through a program that was falling out of favor prior to Trump\u2019s first term: the 287(g) program, named for the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that forms the legal basis for local partners to detain and begin the process of deporting people targeted by the federal government.<\/p>\n For an administration eager to increase its sway over local law enforcement, immigration makes for a good starting point because the government has allocated astronomical sums of cash<\/a> toward arresting, detaining<\/a>, and deporting immigrants.<\/p>\n Paired with Trump\u2019s military deployments to U.S. cities, the expansion of federal control over local police is the first step down a slippery slope, said Shah.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt starts with immigration, and it\u2019s through immigration, but it\u2019s not limited to immigration.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re having federal law enforcement agencies scale up taskforces with state and local law enforcement so that when they talk about deploying into whatever city it is, they are not deploying on their own just as an invading force,\u201d she said. \u201cIt starts with immigration, and it\u2019s through immigration, but it\u2019s not limited to immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n 287(g) agreements were on the decline before Trump was first elected in 2016. During his 2020 campaign, former President Joe Biden pledged that he would end all 287(g) agreements made by Trump. And, in recent years, local sheriffs ran for office on promises to refuse to work with ICE<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a reason why the federal government has largely been tasked with policing immigration, and that\u2019s why there was a lot of resistance to 287(g) including among police chiefs,\u201d said Kubrin, the UC Irvine professor.<\/p>\n Both tacks to reduce the agreements faltered. Biden ended a handful of contracts but largely left the agreements in place<\/a>. And political pressure on law enforcement mounted to form agreements. Several Republican governors, for instance, sued sheriffs<\/a> who refused to work<\/a> with ICE and, in some cases, won cooperation<\/a> with Trump\u2019s deportation agenda.<\/p>\n Now, the mixture of financial incentives and politics are driving a surge. Since Trump took office, partnerships that deploy state and local police to go after immigrants have increased 600 percent.<\/p>\n The number of law enforcement agencies signing on to aid Trump\u2019s deportation machine is surging in part because local police agencies strapped for cash welcome additional funding. The Department of Homeland Security announced<\/a> in September that it would pay out \u201cperformance awards\u201d and fully reimburse police for annual salary and benefits for each 287(g) officer, including partial overtime coverage.<\/p>\n ICE is also offering signing bonuses of up to $50,000, along with student loan forgiveness<\/a>, for new recruits, and airing ads<\/a> to attract police in at least a dozen cities.<\/p>\n In addition to shoring up their finances, law enforcement agencies are also responding directly to political pressure from the White House.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it has to do with political pressure for these jurisdictions to get involved,\u201d Kubrin said. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of political pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the narrative around recruiting police to take on Trump\u2019s deportation agenda has taken for granted that police should be helping ICE carry out their work, said the ACLU\u2019s Shah. It\u2019s not so much that ICE doesn\u2019t have adequate resources, it\u2019s that they need local police on their side to carry out Trump\u2019s political agenda.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re grabbing for local police because local police are all over the place,\u201d Shah said. \u201cIt\u2019s very linked to the larger threats of authoritarianism in the country, and I don\u2019t see that in any of the coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n The massive, nationalized police force taking shape as Trump expands his reach into state and local agencies around the country is not limited to just police.<\/p>\n In Florida, for instance, the Trump administration has active 287(g) agreements with other state agencies, including the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Department of Environmental Protection law enforcement division, the Gaming Control Commission, and the Department of Lottery Services. Wildlife commissions in Louisiana and Virginia are also partnering with the administration to target immigrants for deportation, as well as Virginia\u2019s Marine Resources Commission. (A spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources said the agency has not been requested to participate in any activities related to its 287(g) agreement since it entered into the partnership this summer.)<\/p>\n Since April, the administration has also partnered with university police or trustees for at least nine Florida state universities.<\/p>\n Partnering with agencies that aren\u2019t traditionally focused on law enforcement is part of a strategy to enlist local officials outside of police in enforcing immigration laws, said Kubrin. The same strategy shaped laws like Arizona\u2019s infamous S.B. 1070<\/a> migrant racial profiling law and others modeled after it in states like Georgia and Indiana.<\/p>\n Kubrin said she harbored a serious worry about eventually having to identify undocumented students in her own UC Irvine classes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 10 times worse,\u201d she said, \u201cwhen you\u2019re asking medical officials and teachers to be also policing immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nLocal Partners<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Fall and Rise of 287(g)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
More Than Just Cops<\/strong><\/h2>\n