A new report out from the advocacy group FWD.us looks at a recent surge of local law enforcement agencies signing up to work with ICE through a federal program called 287(g).
The initiative offers different models with varying levels of involvement in ICE enforcement and arrests. Two common agreements, known as the jail enforcement and warrant service officer model, allow deputies or police officers to look up the immigration status of people they arrest, turn that information over to ICE and hold people with pending immigration-related charges for the agency.
Rena Karefa-Johnson, vice president of national initiatives at FWD.us, says the task force model — which allows local officers to do immigration-related questioning, stops and arrests — has been revived and incentivized under the second Trump administration.
"Really the new bigger incentive is the just money, it’s just kind of the full, blanket influx of cash,” she said. “In this new iteration, the administration has promised to reimburse police departments for full salaries overtime, bonuses, start-up costs for officers trained in this program.”
Karefa-Johnson says that’s new this year — agreements made under previous administrations did not pose the same financial incentives as they do now. The jail force model was suspended under the Obama administration in 2012 after a slew of racial profiling lawsuit, including against former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office.
The FWD.us report estimates this year, ICE could pay as much as $2 billion to participating state and local agencies — far surpassing other federal funding earmarked for law enforcement.
It also says between 13,800 and 15,800 police officers and deputies across the country have now been trained to carry out immigration-related enforcement under the program — a larger spike than the 12,000 new personnel the agency has hired directly.
“If agency sign-ups continue at their current pace or even faster and are funded by ICE for all the promised benefits, this funding would continue to balloon,” the report reads. “For example, if the current pace of sign-ups continues for an additional year, 2027 funding could grow to a total of $3.6 billion in 2027, funding 31,000 law enforcement officers deputized by ICE across the country.”
Federal data analyzed by NPR shows there are more than 1,400 287(g) agreements nationwide today.
The number of agreements in Arizona has doubled since the Trump administration took office last January, according to the analysis, with five new agreements being added in the last year.
Only one of those new agreements is a part of the task force model — Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller signed the agreement in August, but it was temporarily blocked by court order after county supervisors argued Miller wasn’t legally allowed to sign that type of agreement.
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