How did ICE cooperation with local law enforcement and 287(g) programs shift in 2025?
Executive summary
The year 2025 saw a decisive shift: the federal government revived and rapidly expanded ICE cooperation with state and local law enforcement through a renewed emphasis on Section 287(g), driven by a January 20, 2025 executive order that explicitly authorized aggressive interior enforcement [1]. That pivot produced a fast-growing network of deputization agreements, new financial incentives for local police, the reintroduction of the Task Force Model for street-level immigration policing, and a sharp partisan split in uptake and reaction across jurisdictions [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. A White House directive that reset priorities
President Trump’s Executive Order 14159, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” issued January 20, 2025, served as the administrative trigger to prioritize interior immigration enforcement and to push DHS and ICE to lean on local law enforcement as force multipliers, explicitly encouraging wider use of 287(g) authority [1] [2].
2. Rapid expansion in jurisdictions and enrollment numbers
ICE’s recruitment and partnership drive produced a dramatic increase in participating agencies during the first half of 2025: independent reporting found that 287(g) partnerships more than doubled by mid‑April 2025 [3], the American Immigration Council counted 737 agreements across 40 states as of June 30, 2025 [6], and DHS later reported more than 1,000 287(g) program agreements by September 2025, reflecting continued enrollment through the year [7].
3. Financial carrots: reimbursements and budget backing
The federal strategy shifted from persuasion to payment: DHS announced that beginning October 1, 2025, ICE would offer new reimbursement opportunities — including full reimbursement for the salary and benefits of eligible trained 287(g) officers and overtime coverage — signaling a material incentive for agencies to sign or expand MOAs with ICE [5]. Advocacy groups and watchdogs flagged parallel congressional appropriations and budget increases that sustained the expansion, with critics noting large appropriations for enforcement in mid‑2025 [8].
4. Revival of the Task Force Model and operational reach
Policy changes revived more expansive modes of deputized enforcement. The Task Force Model (TFM), previously curtailed over concerns about racial profiling and misuse, was actively promoted and implemented in 2025 to permit street‑level immigration enforcement by trained local officers during routine policing — a controversial operational shift documented by civil‑rights groups and policy analysts [4] [9].
5. Patchwork uptake, legal pushback, and political fault lines
Adoption of 287(g) remained uneven and highly political: states and localities with Republican leadership or laws mandating cooperation saw rapid recruitment and TFM rollouts [2], while several states enacted restrictions or declined participation (California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado were cited as limiting cooperation) and civil‑rights organizations warned of harms and litigatory risk [4] [9]. Local debates ranged from councils describing participation as “passive” badge‑checks to community groups demanding investigations into abuses [10] [8].
6. What the expansion changed — and what remains uncertain
The concrete shift in 2025 was administrative and operational: a federal policy reorientation, accelerated signups, revived enforcement models, and new financial incentives that together made local law enforcement a central instrument of national deportation efforts [1] [6] [5]. Precise on‑the‑ground impacts — rates of referrals to ICE, changes in community policing outcomes, or civil‑rights complaint volumes tied specifically to 2025 expansions — are discussed in advocacy and agency summaries but require jurisdictional data not fully captured in the available sources; reporting documents broad patterns and contention but does not provide a unified quantitative impact assessment across all participating jurisdictions [4] [6] [3].