287(g) Program Surges: ICE Signs 1,412 Local Agreements, Raising Legal and Operational Alarms

The Department of Homeland Security reports a dramatic expansion of the 287(g) program: ICE now lists 1,412 active agreements across 40 states and territories, with roughly 1,130 of those registered in 2025 alone. That rapid enrollment shifts significant immigration‑enforcement responsibilities to local law enforcement, effectively creating a distributed enforcement network that augments federal removal capacity.

The administration has favored the program’s broad task‑force model, which empowers participating officers to stop, question and arrest individuals for immigration violations under ICE supervision. ICE provides training — described by DHS as approximately 40 hours — and financial incentives including full salary reimbursement and overtime coverage capped at 25% of an officer’s pay, plus periodic performance awards tied to metrics that remain unclearly defined in public guidance.

DHS points to concentrated enforcement efforts as evidence of immediate impact: state operations in Florida are reported to have produced about 40,000 arrests, while a brief West Virginia sweep yielded roughly 650 arrests over two weeks. DHS also cites hundreds of thousands of removals in its broader enforcement totals, but independent analysis is hampered by opaque data that make it difficult to separate arrests and deportations directly attributable to 287(g) from other ICE programs.

The program’s expansion has unfolded in the wake of several highly visible federal actions, including a fatal Minneapolis encounter that provoked large protests, intensified local organizing, and prompted a federal inquiry that limited state access to investigative materials. That episode accelerated political reactions: the White House dispatched senior officials to coordinate messaging and response, while state legislatures and governors moved in divergent directions — some imposing reporting requirements and new oversight mechanisms, others adopting incentives and draft statutes to require or broaden cooperation with federal officers.

Civil‑rights groups and many former enforcement officials warn that shifting arrest authority to local officers raises profiling and litigation risks. Historical cases tied to local‑federal partnerships have produced multimillion‑dollar liabilities and led prior administrations to curtail task‑force models. The Government Accountability Office’s repeated recommendations for clearer performance metrics and stronger monitoring remain only partially implemented, leaving gaps in accountability as the program scales.

The political reaction is sharply polarized. Progressive states and municipalities are erecting administrative and statutory barriers — creating oversight panels, reporting lines and proposed civil remedies — aimed at documenting or deterring aggressive federal tactics. In contrast, conservative state governments are expanding incentives and administrative paths to deepen cooperation, framing 287(g) as essential to apprehending violent offenders beyond border jurisdictions.

For local police chiefs and municipal officials the choices are fraught: participation affects public safety perceptions, community trust, municipal budgets and insurance exposure, and can draw departments into broader partisan disputes. Prosecutors, special commissions and state attorneys general are already assessing whether state or local legal frameworks can challenge or limit federal actions, raising the prospect of preemption battles and additional litigation.

Strategically, decentralizing enforcement through 287(g) accelerates removals but disperses operational responsibility across a patchwork of training standards, supervision practices and reporting regimes. That hybrid architecture can rapidly increase capacity while amplifying variation in legal compliance and data transparency between jurisdictions.

Absent concerted statutory limits, independent auditing or uniform training standards, the near‑term trajectory points to continued growth in local agreements, with accompanying costs: higher municipal legal liabilities, strained budgets, disrupted community‑police relations and a more contested national enforcement landscape shaped as much by state policy choices and litigation as by federal directives.