Bel Air, Md. Local law enforcement agencies are getting ready to expand a contentious program that permits them to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration tightens its plan for mass deportations.
The new administration will probably use the 287(g) program, which gives state and local law enforcement officials the authority to assist in enforcing federal immigration law, to increase its workforce as it prepares to begin what it claims is the greatest deportation campaign in American history. But as Inauguration Day approaches, it might also serve as a trigger for an impending judicial battle.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, traveled to Texas on Tuesday to promote the incoming administration’s mass deportation plans.
Homan stated that we would not wait until January. We will devise a strategy to safeguard our country.
Homan has pledged to remove ICE’s handcuffs. Homan was the acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term.
Under then-President Bill Clinton, the Immigration and Nationality Act was amended in 1996 to include the 287(g) program. It permits ICE to assign state and local law enforcement officials the authority to carry out specific immigration officer duties. A qualified prison officer may keep a suspect for up to 48 hours after they are arrested for a crime if ICE decides to pick them up for deportation. After that, the officer can view further information about the suspect’s immigration status in an ICE database.
Proponents of the program contend that any enforcement is carried out within an agency’s jail or detention facility after a suspect has been apprehended on other counts, and that it prohibits local cops from apprehending undocumented immigrants on the street.As of May 2024, law enforcement agencies from 21 states were involved in the program, according to ICE.
Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler of Harford County, Maryland, supports the initiative, stating that he thinks local law enforcement should work with ICE to help enforce immigration laws. He also resisted claims that it would result in unjust targeting of unauthorized immigrants.
Gahler stated, “If they are brought in, they are arrested for something that they have committed, an act that they have committed against the citizens of our community.” This isn’t stopped people from asking to see their documents on the street. At that time, they are held responsible for their illegal entry into the country.
Being in the center of the nation’s immigration debate is nothing new to Gahler. In addition to working on a well-known murder case in his county that reportedly included an undocumented immigrant, he has traveled to the southern border multiple times.
The body of 37-year-old mother of five Rachel Morin was discovered off a well-traveled running route the day after she was reported missing on August 5, 2023. After a ten-month nationwide manhunt, Victor Martinez Hernandez, a native of El Salvador, was taken into custody. He was charged with first-degree murder and rape after being extradited to Maryland.
Patty Morin, the victim’s mother, recalls the moment she discovered the suspect lacked documentation.
In an interview with NBC News, she admitted, “I was really really angry.” I believed that laws were in place to deal with this kind of situation. However, as more and more evidence became accessible, I came to the conclusion that something had gone wrong somewhere.
The sheriff of North Carolina’s Rockingham County, Samuel Page, is another advocate of the 287(g) program. It s a much more rural area than Mecklenburg County, where controversy over the program erupted in 2018 when a new sheriff cut ties with it. Page said his county signed up for the program in 2020 and put about a dozen corrections officers through the training. He said there have been fewer requests for ICE detainers during President Joe Biden s administration.
When President Biden came in, he ended a lot of those programs that were good to protect the American people, Page said. We got to draw the line and say the rule of law is going to matter in America.
The 287(g) program has long been controversial. Democrats have moved to cancel agreements in various parts of the country. The American Civil Liberties Union strongly opposes the program and argues it amounts to racial profiling while instilling fear in immigrant communities. The Maryland chapter of the ACLU has said that local police officers are wholly unprepared to act as immigration agents.
This hurts those families, said Todd Shulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigrant advocacy group. This leads to worse public safety outcomes. It erodes a sense of trust in communities and hurts the economy.
Even within ICE, there is debate about whether the juice is worth the squeeze, according to Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff. It may be effective for large cities, he said, where having trained corrections officers help with immigration enforcement inside jails might free up other ICE agents to search for immigrants with more serious criminal records on the streets. But in sparsely populated areas, the time and effort to train officers could be seen as inefficient.
Other critics have also said the 287(g) program merely serves as a political messaging tool for conservative sheriffs.
Trump scampaign platformpromised to require local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. But a growing number of Democrats are vowing to defy that. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles City Councilpassed an ordinancethat prohibits the use of city resources in immigration enforcement.
Elected officials in Massachusettsare already clashingwith the Trump team over immigration. Denver Mayor Mike Johnstonsaid he d be willing to go to jailto stop efforts by the president-elect that he believed were illegal or wrong.
It s all setting the stage for a clash after inauguration.
Local and state officials on the frontlines of the Harris-Biden border invasion have been suffering for four years and are eager for President Trump to return to the Oval Office, said Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump s transition team. On day one, President Trump will marshal every lever of power to secure the border, protect their communities, and launch the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrant criminals in history.
As for the 287(g) program, corrections officers in Harford County, Maryland, are preparing for changes next year with the incoming Trump administration.
I believe we re going to be very busy, said Sgt. Christopher Crespo. The program has been very effective. The last thing you need to do is have someone in the street commit a murder and find out that they were here illegally.
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