Deportation cooperation

Earlier this month, Oklahoma announced a pilot program to transfer illegal immigrants who have committed crimes out of state prisons and into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody quickly once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton, whom Gov. Kevin Stitt tapped to spearhead the program, told WORLD that more than 500 illegal immigrants are behind bars in Oklahoma state facilities.

“Our taxpayers are paying to house them and secure them and feed them,” Tipton added. “Our focus is from the public safety and national security standpoint of, what we can do to work with the incoming Trump administration to as quickly as possible remove those criminals that are here illegally and get them out of Oklahoma?”

It’s unclear whether the incoming administration will deport just immigrants who have committed crimes and have final removal orders or whether it will attempt to expel the estimated 11 million immigrants without legal status residing in the United States. Tipton said his “focus is strictly on those that are here illegally that have committed crimes and/or were criminals before they even came into the country.”

The Sooner State is one of several jurisdictions laying the groundwork to either help—or hinder—the incoming administration’s plans to ramp up deportations of illegal and criminal immigrants.

Thirteen states and hundreds of cities and counties around the country have sanctuary policies that restrict local authorities from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Los Angeles joined their ranks last week when the city council unanimously voted to prohibit the use of city resources or personnel for immigration enforcement in preparation for large-scale removals under Trump.

Some legal experts say the federal government can do little to compel uncooperative states and cities to achieve its immigration goals. Others argue threats to withhold federal funding may cause recalcitrant jurisdictions to change their plans.

Generally speaking, sanctuary cities and states limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities, arguing that doing so inspires greater trust between local law enforcement and immigrant communities. “There really isn’t a definition of what a sanctuary city even is,” said Denise Gilman, the co-director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. “It’s very challenging to make overall statements about what sanctuary cities are doing and what the impacts of that will be,” she said.

Some policies restrict local authorities from making arrests at the behest of federal immigration authorities. They also may prevent police from questioning an individual about his or her immigration status and sharing that with federal authorities. Others bar local jails or state prisons from cooperating with ICE requests to hold immigrants who have committed a crime for up to 48 hours longer than their original sentence to ensure federal agents can take them into custody before they are released.

Most of the immigrants ICE removes from the country have already interacted with the criminal justice system at the state or local level. “ICE doesn’t patrol,” said Jessica Vaughan, who serves as director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. “So the more cooperation they have, the more cases they’re going to be able to remove,” she added.

Though Los Angeles officially became a sanctuary city last week, the city’s police department already had a policy restricting officers from inquiring about a person’s immigration status. At his confirmation hearing, incoming Police Chief Jim McDonnell affirmed the department would resist any attempt at large-scale deportations.“We will not cooperate with mass deportations, and on an individual level, officers will not take action to determine a person’s immigration status and will not arrest them for that status,” he said.

California declared itself a sanctuary state in 2017 after Trump’s previous presidential election victory. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom urged lawmakers to convene for a special session to further “Trump-proof” the state before the president-elect takes office. State Attorney General Rob Bonta followed the governor’s remarks with a pledge to “do everything in our power and use the full authority of our office to defend” immigrants living in California who do not have legal status. That was about 1.9 million people as of 2021, according to a Pew Research Center estimate.

Other cities and states have taken similar action over the past few weeks. “We have laws on the books to ensure that we do not cooperate with civil immigration detainers,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told reporters last week. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston took a more extreme tone when he vowed local police and city resistance would resist Trump’s deportation efforts, predicting a face-off similar to the infamous showdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square between a Chinese student and a tank.

A Chicago ordinance prohibits police from helping ICE officers deport immigrants, and Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city will hold firm to that approach despite an inrush of nearly 50,000 asylum-seekers since 2022 who have overwhelmed the city’s shelter system. Illinois is a sanctuary state, as are Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.

Though the federal government has the authority to set immigration policy, it can’t force the state and local law to carry it out, said Gilman with the University of Texas at Austin. That’s because the 10th Amendment bars the federal government from compelling states to use state resources to enforce federal policies.

The federal government may train and deputize local law enforcement within jurisdictions who want to participate in enforcing immigration law under provision 287(g) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. But the agreement must be voluntary, Gilman noted.

On Sunday, Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, warned the administration will withhold federal funding from uncooperative cities and states.

Many sanctuary cities, including Los Angeles, received millions in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding when tens of thousands of migrants strained their shelter infrastructures, Soledad Ursúa pointed out in a piece for the Manhattan Institute. New York City budgeted $157 million in federal funding to help cover the costs of caring for asylum-seekers this fiscal year.

But Gilman doubts pulling the purse strings will be as effective as the incoming administration hopes. Trump threatened similar funding wars during his first administration. “They weren’t successful, either because the courts stepped in or because the federal government, in the end, didn’t end up trying that hard,” she said. “It’s just not usually very effective to force a state and local government to pursue federal policy … there’s political backlash to that.”

And the funding threat is only valid if the federal program in question is attached to a certain law that the state must obey. The administration can’t simply turn off the spigot for an “entirely unrelated” program, said Scott Andrew Fulks, an immigration attorney with Deckert Law.

In California, Santa Clara County and San Francisco successfully sued the Trump administration following its attempt to deny all federal funding to any jurisdiction that opposed his immigration agenda during Trump’s first term.

“We won’t take that lying down, just as we didn’t last time,” Attorney General Bonta told Politico earlier this month, referring to Homan’s recent threats to withhold funding.

Meanwhile, following an offer of a 1,402-acre ranch, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said on Tuesday that her office is identifying even more land around the Lone Star State where the incoming administration can stage large-scale deporations and erect detention centers as needed. “We have 13 million acres around the state, and if there’s something that meets the federal government’s needs, we want them to be able to utilize that,” Buckingham told The Texas Tribune.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson told Fox Business the city will “stand by” Trump’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records.

In 2017, Texas prohibited local jurisdictions from adopting sanctuary policies. The state went even further last fall when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law, currently tied up in court, making it a state crime for an immigrant to cross the U.S-Mexico border illegally. The measure permits state and local law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants and local judges to issue deportation orders.

Fulks with Deckert Law worries Texas’ efforts, and those of other states rallying state and local law enforcement to assist the incoming administration, could discourage immigrants from reporting crimes and unintentionally encourage racial profiling. He argued sanctuary policies may help keep communities safer in the long run.

“What we want on the ground in cities is for all people to feel the freedom to report crimes that are occurring,” he said. “If there is a situation in that a sizable portion of society does not feel comfortable doing so, it will actually be a detriment to society.”

But Selene Rodriguez, campaign director for the Secure and Sovereign Texas campaign at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, argued these policies attract criminal immigrants, confident they won’t be automatically handed over to ICE. “That’s why it is important that under the Trump administration, the federal government takes a hard stand,” she said. “You are impeding federal law. You’re making it harder for us to keep your community safe.”

In Oklahoma, state Public Safety Commissioner Tipton argued his states’ program to move illegal immigrant prisoners into ICE custody, dubbed Operation Guardian, is essential from a public safety standpoint: “There’s been a serious illegal immigration criminal element in Oklahoma for several years, and especially in the last four years, we’ve seen a huge, huge rise in that.”

Tipton clarified that immigrants serving time in state prison for violent crimes will complete their sentences before they are handed over to ICE, while nonviolent criminals will be transferred over more quickly. “I believe our focus is exactly in line with what conversations we’ve had with the Trump transition team,” he said. “This is all about public safety and national security.”