Texas sheriffs to cooperate with ICE

Texas sheriffs could soon be helping ICE deport illegal immigrants. The Texas Senate on Sunday passed a bill that would require most of the state’s sheriffs’ departments to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials carry out federal immigration enforcement actions.

The Texas Senate passed the measure for the first time on April 1, but the state’s House of Representatives made several amendments to the bill before approving it late last month. The bill then went back to the Senate for a second round of approval. The text that’s headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk requires every Texas sheriff with a jail in their county to request a 287(g) agreement with ICE—an agreement that would have the sheriff’s departments working as a “force multiplier” for the federal immigration agency.

Georgia and Florida have instituted similar measures in recent years. Earlier this year, the governors of Virginia and Louisiana ordered local law enforcement agencies in their states to either adopt 287(g) agreements specifically or work with ICE to crack down on illegal immigrants through other means. Supporters of 287(g) agreements say they increase public safety, but opponents say they will deepen mistrust between law enforcement personnel and the communities that they serve.

What are Section 287(g) agreements? Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows ICE to grant local police departments the authority to handle certain immigration-related arrests. ICE can do that by entering into one of three types of agreements with a local police department.

A jail model allows local authorities to process illegal immigrants who are in their custody and facing active criminal charges. A task force model grants local police personnel the authority to conduct immigration-related arrests and operations out in the field. Under a warrant services officer model agreement, ICE trains law enforcement personnel to conduct basic administrative arrests on aliens in their agency’s custody.

Only two of those kinds of agreements—the jail model and warrant services officer model—have been used in recent years, according to Laurence Benenson, vice president of policy and advocacy at the National Immigration Forum. The task force model fell out of widespread use during the Obama administration following a few high-profile instances of alleged abuse and racial profiling, Benenson said. But earlier this year, the Trump administration reintroduced the task force model as an option for partnership between local police and ICE.

Outside of Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Louisiana, very few local law enforcement agencies have Section 287(g) agreements with ICE, Benenson said. When a state government doesn’t mandate that local police forces enter into these agreements, it’s up to the local jurisdiction to request such an agreement from ICE. Many don’t.

What does the Texas law require local sheriffs to do? Senate Bill 8 would require every sheriff in Texas with a jail in their county to ask ICE for a warrant services officer agreement. Warrant service officer agreements are the lowest-level agreement that a local police department can have with ICE under Section 287(g), according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Roughly 230 of Texas’s 254 counties have jails. If ICE approves all those counties’ 287(g) requests, then approximately 9 out of every 10 sheriffs’ departments in the state would be able to delay the release of illegal immigrants arrested for other offenses such as drunken driving until ICE personnel can come and take custody of them.

“They’re in the jail. They’re set to be released, and ICE wants to take custody of them,” Benenson said. “287(g) helps make those handoffs, because you have a deputized officer in the jail who can then say, ‘I’m going to take custody of you, on behalf of ICE. Now, because I'm serving under ICE, I can have you and then get you into the removal process.’”

Who pays for the agreements? Often, state requirements that local police agencies enter into Section 287(g) agreements can turn into unfunded mandates that put financial and manpower restrictions on local sheriffs, Benenson said. But the Texas law allows local sheriffs to receive reimbursement through the state comptroller for any costs they incur from participating in the agreements. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas argues that the law might not force the state government to cover all the costs that a sheriff’s department could incur through partnering with ICE, which the ACLU says could leave local taxpayers with the bill.

What effect will this have on the state? Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies said that Section 287(g) agreements have only one function: to increase public safety. Adopting these agreements won’t lead to the removal of illegal immigrants who, aside from entering the country illegally, have lived law-abiding lives, she said.

Benenson with the National Immigration Forum said that the immigrants against whom authorities often wield 287(g) agreements are usually not high-level offenders. He said that local sheriffs also have other ways to hand over high-level illegal immigrant offenders to ICE. The sorts of offenders funneled into ICE custody by 287(g) agreements are usually low-level traffic offenders or individuals who have committed only minor offenses, he said.

Benenson expressed concern that the law will decrease trust between local law enforcement personnel and the communities they serve, Benenson argued. He pointed to officials who say that Section 287(g) agreements make it less likely that individuals who don’t have legal status, or who have a family member without legal status, will report a crime committed against them. That makes communities as a whole less safe, Benenson said.

Exposure to liability is another risk inherent in 287(g) agreements for local sheriffs. The ICE administrative warrants that local officials execute on individuals within their custody under 287(g) are not court-approved. Local departments could be forced to pay significant damages as a result of abiding by their 287(g) agreements if a court found them liable for warantless detention.

“While some describe this as burdensome on local sheriffs, In reality, over the many years that this program has been operating, the sheriffs who participate in it like it and say that it is, in fact, not a burden,” Vaughan said. “Over time, it actually reduces the criminal caseload that they have in the county, because the people that they arrest who happen to be non-citizens are more likely to be removed from the county and are not going to keep offending in the county.”

How will this affect ICE’s work? ICE said in a statement provided to WORLD that it could not carry out its mission to deport dangerous illegal immigrants without the assistance of local law enforcement. Using 287(g) agreements to obtain immigration enforcement assistance from local police personnel is also in keeping with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the agency said.