Surge of ICE Agreements with Local Police Aim to Increase Deportations, but Many Police Forces Have Found They Undermine Public Safety
As author Natalia Molina notes in her book “How Race is Made in America,” local police often served as “immigration cops” in Eisenhower’s program because the federal government “did not have enough agents to cover such a large territory” as the U.S.
During his two terms, President Barack Obama deported over 5 million people and used the 287(g) program to help him do that, primarily to target jailed or recently arrived undocumented people. Obama’s use of 287(g) peaked at 76 agreements during his first term but dropped to 35 during his second term.
A Justice Department investigation launched in 2008 found the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona engaged in unconstitutional law enforcement actions against Latinos. The Justice Department found that the sheriff’s office engaged in a pattern of “unlawful seizures, including unjustified stops, detentions, and arrests, of Latinos in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Power of Local Policing
Forty states have adopted 287(g) agreements as of May 2025.
This could have effects outside of the immigration laws.
In the past 45 years, many law enforcement professionals in urban areas have highlighted the importance of forging relationships and building trust with immigrant communities. That’s because the police depend on the participation of all citizens to prevent crime and solve criminal investigations.
But police departments across the U.S. have found that 287(g) partnerships erode that trust.
In 1979, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates created Special Order 40 that prohibited local officers from enforcing immigration laws in response to community complaints alleging discrimination against Latinos. Gates issued the order “to encourage immigrants to cooperate with police and build community trust.”
Other large police departments followed. In places such as Chicago and San Francisco, they shifted focus from helping federal immigration officials to prioritizing community relationships.
William Bratton, who led six police departments, including in Boston, Los Angeles and New York, criticized 287(g) in a 2009 op-ed. He said that deputizing local officers to enforce immigration laws immediately “undermines their core public safety mission.”
Conservative police scholar George Kelling, co-author of the broken windows theory, which presumes that visible signs of disorder can lead to crime, also expressed support for local police agencies prioritizing their community relationships.
In a 1999 study, Kelling highlighted a San Diego police memo announcing its refusal to enforce federal immigration laws. The San Diego Police Department, he wrote, “thought through its values, mission, and functions and elaborated a policy that put public safety and harmony above aggressive attempts to ferret out undocumented aliens.”
During Trump’s first administration, some police chiefs echoed Bratton and Kelling. They warned that employing local officers to enforce immigration measures could spark fear and damage public safety.
Former Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole stated in 2016 that Seattle police officers were prohibited from “inquiring about a person’s immigration status.”
And former Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn announced in 2016 that his department does not enforce immigration law.
He added, “It is our opinion, our strongly held belief that our responsibility is to protect the residents of our city. To protect them, they must trust us, they must be willing to report crimes, they must be willing to be witnesses.”
Consequences of 287(g)
President Trump has frequently linked immigrants with higher crime rates, calling them murderers and rapists.
But multiple studies have found that undocumented people commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens.
Although the Trump administration is expanding the use of local police in immigration enforcement, research casts doubt on using mass deportation as a crime reduction strategy.
A 2018 study on 287(g) from the libertarian Cato Institute found no evidence that ICE-led partnerships with local police decreased crime rates.
And a 2014 study on the Secure Communities Program, which calls for local police agencies to share arrestee information with federal immigration officials, found that this program has “no discernible impact” on crime in medium and large municipalities.
The Trump administration’s expansion of 287(g) ignores the shift that some big city police departments have made away from immigration enforcement in favor of community policing. And I believe it threatens to undermine the relationship between local police and the increasingly diverse communities they serve.
W. Carsten Andresen is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, St. Edward’s University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
