287g Agreements Explained
Section 287(g) Agreements
Section 287(g) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act is the legal switch that lets the Department of Homeland Security deputize local police as federal immigration agents. It was created in 1996, buried inside the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and it fundamentally changed the relationship between local policing and federal immigration enforcement.
Under 287(g), ICE trains selected officers and then gives them federal authority to identify, question, process, and detain people for immigration violations during their everyday policing. In practice, it turns ordinary sheriff’s deputies into an extension of ICE’s interior enforcement machine.
Implementation
Participating officers go through roughly four weeks of ICE-controlled training, and then they’re folded directly into federal immigration enforcement structures. Out of more than 15,000 police and sheriff departments in the United States, only 37 agencies still used 287(g) as of March 2017. Most dropped the program because:
- it destroyed community trust
- it created massive political blowback
- it was expensive
- it pulled officers away from actual criminal work
- it made local departments responsible for enforcing federal civil law
But despite being widely discredited, the program generated enormous numbers: between 2006 and 2015, more than 402,000 people were flagged for deportation through 287(g).
ICE has historically used three versions of 287(g):
- a **jail model**, where sheriffs interrogate people in custody
- a **warrant service model**, where local officers help ICE serve immigration warrants
- a **task force model**, where officers conduct public, street-level immigration enforcement
The task-force model is the notorious one — the one associated with roadside sweeps, street arrests, and deputies behaving like federal agents on patrol.
Florida officials have even threatened to remove local leaders from office if they refuse cooperation, underlining how intensely political and coercive the program has become.
History
287(g) started as a jail-only program, targeting people already in custody. Then everything changed in 2006, when the sheriff of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Jim Pendergraph, began using 287(g) for street enforcement. This was the beginning of the task-force era — and it quickly spread.
Pendergraph was rewarded with a position inside ICE headquarters, where he helped push this aggressive model nationwide.
By 2012, even ICE admitted it was unsustainable and quietly shut down task-force agreements, shifting to “more efficient” programs like Secure Communities. Participation collapsed from a peak of 72 jurisdictions in 2011 to just 37 by 2017, and legal advocates across the country openly predicted the program’s death.
But the Trump administration revived and weaponized 287(g). In a 2017 executive order, Trump ordered DHS to massively expand partnerships. Sheriffs rushed to enroll, and the number of agreements exploded — from 135 in January 2025 to **649 in June 2025**. This is one of the largest expansions of local-to-federal immigration policing in U.S. history.
Civil Rights Violations
The federal government itself has documented widespread abuses under 287(g). The Department of Justice found multiple jurisdictions using their authority to racially profile, target, and harass Latino communities.
Notorious examples:
- **Maricopa County, Arizona** — Sheriff Joe Arpaio turned 287(g) into a racial-profiling dragnet, justifying sweeping operations that targeted Latinos en masse.
- **Alamance County, NC** — Deputies set up checkpoints specifically at the entrances of Latino neighborhoods. Latino drivers were ten times more likely to be stopped. They were arrested for violations that white drivers received citations for.
- **Nationwide patterns** — The ACLU and civil rights groups documented repeated abuses: discriminatory stops, detention without cause, unconstitutional searches, and officers wildly exceeding the authority ICE had granted them.
In 2017, the ACLU urged ICE to terminate the program entirely, arguing that the pattern of misconduct was not a bug — it was the system working exactly as designed.
Support and Opposition
Support comes almost entirely from political actors who want local police to serve as immigration agents. The National Sheriffs' Association champions 287(g), arguing it strengthens “public safety and homeland security.”
Opposition is broad and spans law enforcement leaders and civil rights organizations:
- The International Association of Chiefs of Police
- The Major Cities Chiefs Association
- The Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force
- The ACLU
- The American Immigration Council
- The Southern Center for Human Rights
The common argument: when local police turn into ICE extensions, community trust collapses. People stop reporting crimes, won’t cooperate with investigations, and become vulnerable to exploitation — while racial profiling becomes routine.