How do 287(g) agreements change local police interactions with ICE?

1. What 287(g) actually authorizes and the models that shape interactions

Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act permits ICE to delegate specific immigration functions to trained local officers under memoranda of agreement, and that delegation can take several forms—Task Force Model, Jail Enforcement Model (JEM), and Warrant Service Officer (WSO) among them—each conferring different powers and points of contact between local police and ICE ^{[1] [5] [6]}.

2. From cooperation to deputization: how day‑to‑day policing shifts

Under task‑force style agreements, local officers can question people about immigration status during routine enforcement—traffic stops, field investigations, and other interactions—effectively deputizing municipal or county officers to perform ICE duties in the field; JEM and WSO models concentrate authority inside jails to screen detainees and execute immigration warrants ^{[6] [5] [1]}.

3. Practical consequences: resource diversion and operational focus

Multiple analyses and advocacy groups report that 287(g) diverts scarce local law‑enforcement resources toward federal immigration objectives, pulling officers away from community‑focused policing and routine public‑safety priorities—an effect described as expanding duties of local police into de facto immigration enforcement ^{[4] [7]}.

4. Community trust, reporting, and public‑safety tradeoffs

Civil‑rights organizations and local critics say embedding immigration enforcement in ordinary policing undermines trust: residents may avoid calling police, reporting crimes, or cooperating as witnesses out of fear of immigration consequences, creating public‑safety tradeoffs even where jurisdictions claim no change in 911 usage ^{[3] [8]}.

5. Civil‑rights risks and oversight challenges

Legal observers and watchdogs warn that asking local officers to interpret complex federal immigration law raises the risk of racial profiling and unconstitutional conduct, a pattern that previously prompted the discontinuation of the task‑force model under the Obama administration and has reemerged amid rapid expansion—while DHS itself has acknowledged oversight limitations after fast growth ^{[9] [10]}.

6. Incentives, expansion, and political context

DHS and ICE frame 287(g) expansion as a way to “remove the worst of the worst” and encourage participation through reimbursement and recruitment messaging; under the recent expansion ICE reported thousands of MOAs and called the program a force multiplier, while critics point to political incentives and executive orders that actively drove the uptick ^{[2] [1] [3]}.

7. Mixed evidence on public‑safety outcomes and contested narratives

Empirical claims that 287(g) makes communities safer are disputed: DHS emphasizes removal of criminal aliens as a public‑safety benefit ^[2], whereas research and advocacy groups argue the program is ineffective at reducing crime, costly for local agencies, and functions more as a deportation engine than a crime‑fighting tool ^{[4] [3]}.

8. How interactions with ICE actually look in practice and limits of available reporting

In practice, interactions range from ICE‑supervised jail screenings and execution of immigration detainers to local patrol officers asking immigration questions during stops—behavior that varies by model and locality and has produced documented community backlash in places that held public meetings or resisted agreements ^{[5] [11] [8]}. Reporting supplied here documents expansion, models, and competing claims about safety and harms, but does not provide comprehensive, independently verified national crime‑trend analyses or uniform data on how 287(g) changed arrest patterns in every jurisdiction; those are gaps in the available sources ^{[1] [4]}.