Texas Sheriffs-ICE 287g Agreements Impact for New York Times

In June, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 8, requiring any sheriff who runs a jail to seek a 287(g) agreement with ICE. The law aims to create “uniformity and cooperation among all counties,” according to the bill’s sponsors. Governor Greg Abbot signed the bill on June 20. It is scheduled to take effect at the start of the new year. Sheriffs will be required to choose one of three federally-defined 287(g) models: jail enforcement, task force, or warrant service. The jail enforcement model lets local officers screen and process immigrants for ICE inside jails. The warrant service model authorizes them to serve and execute ICE administrative warrants on detainees in custody. The task force model allows deputized officers to identify and arrest undocumented immigrants during their regular police duties. The program has rapidly expanded under the Trump administration. In September, DHS celebrated a 641 percent increase in 287(g) partnerships, claiming “more than 1,000 local and state law enforcement agencies in 40 states” are now working with ICE. There are financial incentives for agencies willing to sign up. Local departments that sign 287(g) agreements can have each deputized officer’s salary, benefits, and overtime costs fully covered by the federal government. They are also eligible for quarterly performance bonuses of up to $1,000 per officer based on arrests and their responsiveness to ICE requests. In a separate move, the Texas Attorney General’s office signed the first statewide 287(g) agreement with ICE at the start of the year, delegating selected state investigators to perform immigration-officer functions: interrogating individuals about their status, making arrests without warrants, and preparing charging documents. In practical terms, Texas is poised to no longer simply cooperate with federal immigration authorities, but function as an annex of them: a state-run extension of federal enforcement built into its everyday policing, transforming state sovereignty into an instrument of national policy.