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How Trump’s ICE Built Nationwide Police Alliance Right Under Democrats’ Noses

How Trump’s ICE Built Nationwide Police Alliance Right Under Democrats’ Noses

Gulbenk/Wikimedia Commons

Hudson Crozier
February 11, 2026 12:18 PM ET

President Donald Trump dramatically expanded a little-known program allowing local law enforcement to assist deportation operations even in liberal states, documents show.

Since 2019, more than 1,350 local agencies have penned agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including 68 from Democratic states and 88 in swing states, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of ICE records found. Liberal activists and officials are coming up with ways to thwart the contracts, known as 287(g) agreements, after Trump’s officials gained a foothold for ICE around the country under his first and second terms.

The 287(g) contracts are “the most effective tools [ICE] agents can use to integrate with local and state law enforcement,” Chad Wolf, former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head in Trump’s first term, told the DCNF. He now leads homeland security and immigration policy at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.

Democrats and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argue that local law enforcement should focus on local offenses, while supporters of 287(g) partnerships say they let ICE take migrants from jails without hunting them down in neighborhoods.

Building The Deportation Machine

Congress created the 287(g) program through a 1996 law, years before the Bush administration formed the first agreement in 2002 during its post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. ICE later grew the 287(g) program from 35 jurisdictions to nearly 150 under Wolf’s leadership, he noted in comments to the DCNF.

The contracts fall into three categories: one allowing jail authorities to identify and transfer deportable migrant inmates to ICE, another letting police interrogate or arrest based on immigration violations during normal duties, and a third that involves ICE training officers to execute immigration warrants on migrants in jail.

“The agreements force-multiply immigration enforcement and create safer conditions for federal agents, local law enforcement, and detainees,” Wolf said.

Former President Joe Biden acted against 287(g) contracts “to open our borders and limit immigration enforcement,” Wolf said. Biden’s officials put a freeze on any new contracts while terminating others, according to an archived ICE webpage. ICE’s current database shows no ongoing agreements began under Biden.

“Today, federal officers are faced with the enormous task of locating, detaining and removing millions of people — many of whom are criminals — that came in under Biden,” Wolf told the DCNF. “Sanctuary cities refuse to cooperate with ICE, and in cases like Minneapolis, residents violently protest their presence.”

Trump’s second term has produced more than 1,000 287(g) partnerships in 2025 and over 100 in 2026 so far, ICE records show. Local law enforcement under 287(g) agreements helped ICE locate convicted child rapists, other sex offenders, murderers, drug traffickers and other criminals since Trump’s return to office, according to monthly ICE reports.

“We have had tremendous success when local law enforcement work with us including 40,000 arrests in Florida,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the DCNF.

“Elected officials who refuse to cooperate with DHS law enforcement are wasting law enforcement time, energy, and resources, while putting their own constituents in danger,” McLaughlin said.

Anti-ICE Left Gets Wise

Washington State, Oregon, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine and New Mexico already have state-level policies banning 287(g) partnerships, ICE’s website and state records show. Democrats in other states aim to follow suit.

Maryland’s Democrat-led legislature passed legislation on Tuesday that would ban the contracts despite nine local agencies signing them, and Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said on Friday that he is “looking forward to” approving it, local media outlets reported. “We are going to do everything in our power to keep people safe, but that does not mean deputizing the people who are keeping people safe to go perform functions by a rogue ICE agency,” Moore reportedly said.

Democrats in Massachusetts and New York also proposed bills to abolish the ICE agreements in 2025.

Other liberal governors are taking action on their own. Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, whose state has a 287(g) jail partnership established in 2020, signed a January executive order telling state agencies not to sign new ones unless they are “based on a specific, articulable public safety risk or need” and expire after 12 months. Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ordered state law enforcement agencies on Feb. 4 to scrap the five 287(g) agreements they signed in 2025 under former Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Spanberger cannot get rid of the others signed in 2025 by twenty-five county sheriff’s offices and two county jail authorities. However, Democrat-backed legislation would bar Virginia law enforcement from signing the contracts without agreeing to several restrictions on ICE, such as a provision barring ICE from inquiring about someone’s immigration status without a judicial warrant or subpoena.

The ACLU also sued law enforcement in Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota in 2025 over the contracts, according to the group’s announcements and court records. The Teller County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado also settled an ACLU lawsuit by agreeing that its participation in the ICE program since 2020 was unlawful and accepting new restrictions, hampering Colorado’s only active 287(g) agreement, the ACLU announced in January 2025.

Two sheriffs in Minnesota counties also voided their 287(g) contracts after a non-binding December opinion from Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison that attacked their legality, local media reported.

If states critical of ICE want to avoid encounters with agents in the streets — like those involving Minnesota protesters — they should welcome the system ICE is offering, Wolf told the DCNF.

“If states chose to partner with ICE through 287(g) agreements, ICE could focus on taking custody of illegal aliens in a safer jail setting, rather than conducting operations in local communities where the possibility of violence is amplified,” the former Trump appointee said.

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