For years, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office in suburban Indianapolis has wanted to partner with federal immigration authorities to identify and detain immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and facing charges.
President Joe Biden's administration never returned its calls, the sheriff's office said. But as President Donald Trump cracks down on illegal immigration, Hamilton County deputies soon could become the first in Indiana empowered to carry out federal immigration duties and one of many nationally that Trump's administration hopes to enlist. “We definitely are joining,” Chief Deputy John Lowes told The Associated Press. “We want to collaborate with ICE to make sure we keep our community safe.”
Under Trump, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement is reviving and expanding a decades-old program that trains local law officers to interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation. The 287(g) program — named for a section of the 1996 law that created it — currently applies only to those already jailed or imprisoned on charges. But Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, recently told sheriffs that he wants to expand it to include local task forces that can make arrests on the streets, reviving a model that former President Barrack Obama discontinued amid concerns about racial profiling. It's unclear whether that could allow local officers to stop people solely to check their immigration status.
On Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the Florida Highway Patrol had struck an agreement with ICE to interrogate, arrest and detain immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and deliver them to federal authorities. The arrangement will help “fulfill the president’s mission to effectuate the largest deportation program in American history,” DeSantis said.
Advocates for immigrants, meanwhile, are raising alarm about new pacts that put local law officers on immigration enforcement. “All of these agreements, in practice, have the same track record of racial profiling, of sweeping in U.S. citizens or people who have lawful status, of having a chilling effect in terms of communities reporting crime to local law enforcement agencies," said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
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