A staggering number of local police are now working for ICE’s immigration roundup surge

As many as 15,800 local law enforcement officers have been deputized to enforce immigration law, report finds

Local law enforcement agencies deputized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have exploded during Donald Trump’s second administration, with as many as 15,800 police officers and sheriff’s deputies working with federal agents to arrest and jail immigrants, according to a new analysis.

More than 760 local law enforcement agencies have partnered with ICE since Trump took office, according to the analysis from FWD.US, a nonpartisan policy organization.

There are now nearly 1,200 local agencies working in tandem with ICE, up from 135 during Joe Biden’s administration and 150 at the end of Trump’s first term, the group found.

That drastic expansion of the 287(g) “task force” program, which deputizes cops to stop and arrest people they believe are in the country illegally, is fueled by at least $137 million in new federal funding to local police agencies.

At that participation rate, ICE could inject more than $3 billion into local police agencies to deputize nearly 30,000 officers nationwide by 2027, according to the analysis.

Enrollment in ICE’s 287(g) program that deputized local police to help arrest immigrants has exploded in Trump’s second term, with as many as 1,200 local law enforcement agencies joining in, a new analysis found (AFP via Getty Images)

“This would be by far the largest infusion of federal funding into local law enforcement since the 1990s COPS grants, which increased low-level arrests while having no significant impact on crime,” according to Felicity Rose, vice president of criminal justice research and policy at FWD.us.

The 287(g) model has similarly caused “massive harm to communities while failing to reduce crime,” she added. “This program is a confluence of two bad ideas that should be left in the past where they belong.”

Barack Obama’s administration abandoned the “task force” model in 2012 following allegations in Maricopa County, Arizona, where notorious former sheriff Joe Arpaio was accused of racially profiling and arresting Latino residents over their legal status.

A federal judge in 2013 determined he violated detainees’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. He was later convicted of criminal contempt for defying a judge’s order to stop detaining immigrants because they lacked legal status, which his deputies continued for 18 months.

“Over a decade ago, we saw how deputizing local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement could result in disaster under Sheriff Arpaio and others,” said FWD.us president Todd Schulte,.

“Federal incentives to target and profile will harm immigrant communities and have spillover effects on other communities already targeted by local law enforcement impacting immigrants and citizens alike,” he added.

Dallas police and law enforcement chiefs in Houston and San Antonio have not joined the task force program, along with other local police agencies in the top 10 US cities (AFP via Getty Images)

The Trump administration restarted the program in early 2025, with new funding and incentives for state and local police, and with a massive injection of taxpayer funding through the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that has made ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency, with a budget that outpaces that of most nations’ militaries.

ICE has promised to give law enforcement agencies $7,500 for equipment per trained officer, as well as $100,000 for new vehicles and overtime pay of up to 25 percent of an officer’s salary.

Federal funding also includes “performance” bonuses tied to immigration arrests, providing agencies with financial incentive to arrest people suspected of living in the country illegally.

State and local law enforcement are expected to receive up to $2 billion this year under Trump’s sweeping domestic spending bill, FWD.us found.

“This amount would dwarf all other federal funding for local law enforcement,” according to the report.

At least 342 Florida law enforcement agencies have 287(g) agreements, the most of any state, the report found.

In Texas, a state where counties with more than 100,000 residents are required to join ICE’s program, law enforcement agencies have signed 296 agreements. Tennessee has 63, Pennsylvania has 58, and Alabama has 52, according to FWD.us.

The program’s expansion “further fuels Trump’s mass deportation agenda by expanding the dragnet for putting people into the arrest to deportation pipeline,” according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Administration officials routinely promote the program.

“We would love for state and local law enforcement to sign 287(g) agreements to help us remove criminal illegal aliens — partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

But many local law enforcement agencies are resisting the program, fearing that their departments are already stretched too thin and cannot be expected to perform federal duties while responding to other critical incidents.

None of the police departments of the top 10 U.S. cities — including Texas cities Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — are signed on as 287(g) partners.

With a surge of new federal funding, ICE is also radically expanding its detention space with converted warehouses that can detain up to 10,000 people, including a facility in New Hampshire that state and local officials do not want (REUTERS)

At the same time, the Trump administration is increasingly relying on the nation’s vast network of local jails and prisons to detain and deport immigrants.

ICE averaged as many as 700 arrests a month inside local jails, according to research from Prison Policy Initiative.

The Trump administration also intends to significantly expand federal immigration detention capacity, with a nearly $40 billion plan to detain tens of thousands of immigrants in retrofitted warehouses across the country.

ICE expects to purchase 16 buildings it can convert into “processing” centers to temporarily detain up to 1,500 immigrants in each before they’re moved to larger facilities.

Another eight larger warehouses would hold up to 10,000 people at a time, serving as “primary locations” for removal from the country, according to recently published documents.

Those facilities add to an already-expansive federal immigration detention system of dozens of jails, mostly operated by private firms, in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet.