How have state laws passed since 2024 limited or enabled local cooperation with ICE in major cities?
Executive summary
State laws passed since 2024 have created a patchwork that both constrains and enables local cooperation with ICE: some states have enacted statutory barriers and funding restrictions that limit detainer compliance, jail access, and 287(g)-style deputizations, while other states have passed laws or relied on executive measures that actively compel or incentivize local agencies to partner with federal immigration enforcement, producing sharply different outcomes in major cities [1] [2] [3].
1. Legal fences that blunt ICE’s local reach
A minority of states — led by examples highlighted as comprehensive by advocacy groups — have passed laws that explicitly restrict the transfer of people to ICE, limit honoring ICE detainers without a judicial warrant, bar immigration arrests in sensitive locations like courthouses, and prohibit contracting with private immigration detention facilities, creating statutory shields that reduce local entanglement with ICE in cities within those states [1] [4] [5].
2. Statutory bans and funding levers: the new blunt instruments
Rather than only relying on city ordinances or executive directives, several states have pushed policy tools that use state law and grant conditions to curb cooperation — for example, proposals and actions to withhold state public-safety grants from jurisdictions that enter 287(g) agreements or otherwise cooperate with ICE, a strategy New York’s governor has pursued as an alternative to an outright ban on local cooperation [6] [7].
3. Laws and mandates that enable cooperation and deputization
Conversely, a trend of enabling statutes and political pushes in multiple states has produced legal obligations or incentives for local agencies to work with ICE: some southern and Sun Belt states have required local law enforcement to deputize personnel to serve ICE functions, contributing to much higher ICE arrest rates in those jurisdictions and making major cities in those states more accessible to federal enforcement [3] [8].
4. The 287(g) resurgence and uneven city impacts
The federal 287(g) delegation remains the key mechanism through which state and local police perform federal immigration functions; its rapid expansion since 2024 — with hundreds of new agreements and task-force models — has been enabled where state law or politics encourage participation, while states that have limited 287(g) participation (California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado per civil-rights reporting) have seen fewer ICE-originated arrests stemming from local jails and police [9] [2] [10].
5. Federal pushes, state resistance, and the legal gray zone
Federal proposals and enforcement priorities — including bills seeking to shield localities that comply or to penalize “sanctuary” policies — intersect with state laws to create a contested legal terrain; the Department of Justice’s sanctuary-designation process underscores that there is no single federal mandate forcing localities to act, even as federal executive directives and legislation (like the Immigration Detainer Enforcement Act discussions) seek to change incentives and liabilities for local governments [7] [11].
6. Civil‑rights, policing and the hidden incentives shaping choices
State laws that compel cooperation or deputization often carry explicit public‑safety rationales, but critics and civil‑rights groups frame them as incentivizing racialized policing and unlawful detentions — concerns reflected in reporting on expanded 287(g) task forces and litigation over detainer practices — while states that bar cooperation sometimes face political and fiscal pushback that exposes an underlying agenda: to shape where enforcement resources flow and which cities become easier targets for ICE operations [8] [11] [12].
7. What this means for major-city outcomes
The net effect is geographic: major cities located in restrictive states can blunt routine ICE arrests by law enforcement and limit in‑jail transfers, protecting municipal control over policing choices, whereas major cities in states that mandate or incentivize cooperation see increased federal-local operations, higher numbers of ICE arrests, and more deputized officers embedded in local agencies — a bifurcated landscape driven as much by state statutes and grant rules as by municipal policy [1] [3] [10].
8. Limits of available reporting and open questions
Existing reporting documents legal changes, 287(g) counts, and broad arrest trends but does not uniformly link every city’s arrest totals to specific post‑2024 state statutes; moreover, while advocacy groups and federal data show correlations between state policy and ICE activity, determining precise causal chains for each major city requires more granular, jurisdiction‑level data than is available in the sources reviewed [10] [12].