Texas Police Are Slowly Joining What Could Be a ‘Giant ICE Army’

Three months into his second presidential term, Donald Trump appears well off pace to hit his promised record numbers of deportations. 

While the new administration’s tallies haven’t yet surpassed those of prior presidents, the Trump regime has indeed ramped up the lawlessness of its immigration enforcement, largely by skirting due process and sending people to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador. That country’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, has eagerly declared that the doors of his penitentiary will be open to more immigrants and inmates sent from the United States—at American taxpayers’ expense. Most of those sent to El Salvador’s prison do not have criminal records, and one of the inmates, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was wrongfully deported and is married to a U.S. citizen. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered his return, but both Bukele and Trump have refused.

As much of the country focuses on Trump’s international authoritarian affairs, police across the United States are quietly lining up to help provide the manpower that Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needs to increase lagging deportation figures. 

To augment its roughly 6,000 ICE deportation agents—pending possibly supercharged Congressional funding—the Trump administration has enlisted the help of other federal agencies including the Drug Enforcement Agency and Internal Revenue Service. But an even more significant expansion may be playing out at the county and municipal levels across the country.

Since late January, nearly 200 county, city, and state law enforcement agencies have signed what are known as 287(g) task force model agreements with ICE. These agencies operate in 23 states, with a whopping 137 in Florida.

So far, 14 agencies have signed on to the task force agreements in Texas, primarily rural county sheriff’s offices as well as Smith County, which is home to Tyler and more than 245,000 people in East Texas. The Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Texas National Guard have also signed task force agreements with ICE. 

The 287(g) task force program is being revived 13 years after the Obama administration terminated it amid controversies over racial profiling. The program allows local officers who’ve received federal training to “perform certain functions of an immigration officer,” as outlined in the agreement used by the Trump administration, including the power to: “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or remain in the United States”; arrest without a warrant anyone the officer believes “is in the United States in violation of law and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained”; execute warrants for immigration violations; and prepare immigration charging documents.

This form of ICE collaboration with local authorities is “really aggressive,” said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council. “It’s literally officers in the streets stopping, detaining, questioning, interrogating, arresting—the task force model is a force multiplier of federal immigration agencies.”

There are two other kinds of 287(g) programs, which have persisted through the last few presidencies, but those models are limited to ICE-county cooperation within jails and have sparked far less concern.

The new 287(g) task forces have proliferated most rapidly in Florida: With Governor Ron DeSantis backing the program, every one of the 67 county sheriffs in the state has signed a task force agreement, in addition to municipal and state agencies.

Texas ranks second among states in task forces inked, at 14, though that’s a small fraction of the state’s 254 sheriffs and its galaxy of municipal and state police agencies. Among the Texas signatories is the sheriff of Kinney County, whose office has collaborated with paramilitary organizations and bought pepper ball and tear gas launcher rifles last year to potentially use against migrants.

Notably, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), which has around 5,000 commissioned officers and leads the state’s border security efforts, has not signed a task force agreement. The agency did not respond to Observer questions sent via email. The governor’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.

In a March House committee hearing, Texas DPS Deputy Director of Law Enforcement Operations Jason Taylor seemed to caution against at least some aspects of 287(g) agreements: “If we’re taking troopers, special agents, Rangers off the line to process—then I think we’re diminishing some of the public safety aspects of our agency,” Taylor said.

The Texas National Guard (TNG), which has around 23,000 members, signed its 287(g) task force agreement with ICE on April 11. TNG soldiers have been regularly deployed to the border in Texas to deter migrants under Operation Lone Star and other mobilizations. Governor Greg Abbott signed an agreement earlier this year with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorizing TNG to enforce immigration law in tandem with the Border Patrol. That agreement is pursuant to a different federal statute than 287(g), which the Trump administration has misleadingly invoked to address a “mass influx” of migrants, and it differs in some ways from the 287(g) task forces.

TNG’s new 287(g) agreement suggests the Guard could enforce immigration law in parts of the state far from the border. In addition to participating in political projects like Operation Lone Star, TNG deploys in response to state emergencies including hurricanes and pandemics. The Texas Military Department did not respond to Observer emails and calls for this story.

Advocates are concerned about local agencies and soldiers getting into the business of immigration enforcement, which has been typically left to ICE and CBP. “There would be no buffers,” said Etter.

But whether Texas sheriffs will join the task force program en masse, like their Florida counterparts, remains to be seen.

Some cash-strapped counties may find the model burdensome, since ICE pays for training but not hours spent enforcing federal law. “If you’re a really small county sheriff’s office, and there’s just maybe two or three of you, it may be impractical to run that program,” said Thomas Kerss, the executive director of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas.

Even midsize counties may find the program impractical. “We are not hesitant to participate,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Giles of Potter County, which is home to Amarillo and does not have a task force agreement. “We do have real-world concerns or considerations about staffing. We don’t have the staff to dedicate to a full-time ICE task force.”

The two largest counties with Republican sheriffs, Tarrant and Collin in fast-growing North Texas, have also not inked agreements. 

But sheriffs’ reluctance may not matter soon. Legislation has passed the Texas Senate and is pending in the House that, in its current form, would compel sheriffs of counties with 100,000 residents to “request, and as offered” sign a 287(g) deal with ICE or “an agreement under a similar federal program.” (More than 80 percent of Texans live in counties with a population of at least 100,000 residents.)

The legislation presently does not specify what kind of 287(g) agreement sheriffs must apply for or accept, nor does it clarify what other similar agreements could substitute for 287(g).

“What is a similar federal program to 287(g)? That’s up to the Trump administration, and that’s up to Stephen Miller—and then our local sheriffs will be bound by that,” Etter said. “It’s really left up to the imagination of the federal government.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project has also raised concerns about the legislation. The organization’s director of policy and advocacy, David Sánchez, called it a “reckless attempt to turn sheriffs into federal agents” in a news release.

“This bill undermines local control, worsens racial profiling, and wastes resources we need to keep our communities safe,” Sánchez said. “It does not make Texas safer—it makes it more fearful.”

ICE did not respond to questions for this story. 

For now, the 287(g) task force agreements that are already signed are largely just paper, since required federal training has not been made widely available. “We’re surprised it hasn’t happened yet,” said Goliad County Sheriff’s Deputy Caleb Breshears, adding that his department—which signed a task force agreement in February—had been asking the feds about it in early April. “We were told that they’re still working on it.”

Breshears said he expected the training to be a 40-hour online program. An ICE fact sheet says the task force training will be “provided virtually,” and local media in Florida have also reported the training would be 40 hours and online.

Governor Abbott has also issued an executive order ordering “all appropriate state agencies to assist federal actors working under the direction of the Trump Administration with carrying out functions under federal immigration laws,” though the extent of the order’s impact remains murky.

If the Legislature passes compulsory ICE cooperation and Abbott marshals the whole state apparatus to back Trump’s deportation agenda, Etter said, “We literally then end up living in a state that is basically just a giant ICE army.”

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