The revival of an old program delegates Trump immigration enforcement to local police

By GISELA SALOMON and REBECCA SANTANA As part of the Trump administration s push to carry out mass deportations the agency responsible for immigration enforcement has aggressively revived and expanded a decades-old venture that delegates immigration enforcement powers to state and local law enforcement agencies Related Articles New Jersey Democratic Rep McIver issued on recognizance on federal assault charges Defense Department accepts Boeing from Qatar for Trump s use Trump confronts South African leader with baseless suggests of the targeted killing of white farmers A Texas effort to clarify abortion ban reaches a key vote but doubts remain Most of AAPI adults oppose college funding cuts and participant deportations a new poll finds Under the g initiative led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement police officers can interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for likely deportation Since President Donald Trump took office in January ICE has rapidly expanded the number of signed agreements it has with law enforcement agencies across the country The reason is clear Those agreements vastly beef up the number of immigration enforcement staff available to ICE which has about deportation officers as they aim to meet Trump s goal of deporting as multiple of the roughly million people in the country illegally as they can Here s a look at what these agreements are and what critics say about them What is a g agreement and what s the benefit to ICE These agreements are signed between a law enforcement agency and ICE and allow the law enforcement agency to perform certain types of immigration enforcement actions There are three different types of agreements Under the jail services model law enforcement officers can screen people detained in jails for immigration violations The warrant amenity officer model authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to comply with ICE warrants or requests on immigrants while they are at their agency s jails The task force model gives local officers the ability to investigate someone s immigration status during their routine police duties These agreements were authorized by a law but it wasn t until that the federal regime really signed one of these agreements with a local agency The first agreement was with Florida s Department of Law Enforcement The benefit to ICE is that it expands the ability to enforce immigration law across multiple jurisdictions stated John Torres who served as acting director of ICE from to Earlier in his career he noted he was assigned to the Los Angeles jail and would interview any foreign citizen who came through the jail to see if they were in the country illegally But if a jail has a g agreement with ICE it frees up those agents at the jail to do something else What s going on with these agreements under the Trump administration The number of signed agreements has ballooned under Trump in a matter of months In December of last year ICE had agreements with law enforcement agencies across states By May ICE had signed agreements with local and state agencies across states with an additional agencies pending approval Roughly half of the pacts are in Florida where Republican Gov Ron DeSantis in recent times publicized the arrest of more than immigrants in an orchestrated sweep between local and federal leaders Texas where Republican Gov Greg Abbott has also allied himself with Trump on immigration comes in second Other states topping the list are Georgia and North Carolina A majority of the agreements are with sheriff s departments a reflection of the fact that they are largely responsible for running jails in America But other agencies have also signed the agreements including the Florida and Texas National Guard the Florida Department of Lottery Services and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission The expansion of agreements has been unprecedented in terms of the speed and the breath reported Amien Kacou attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida ICE under the Trump administration has made a push in every state essentially to have them cooperate Kacou announced So what are the concerns Immigrants and their attorneys and advocates say these agreements can lead to racial profiling and there s not enough oversight If you are an immigrant or if you sound like an immigrant or you look like an immigrant you are likely to be detained here in Florida revealed Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet executive director at Hope Locality Center in Apopka central Florida These concerns are especially acute over the task force model since those models allow law enforcement officers to carry out immigration enforcement actions as part of their daily law enforcement work Lena Graber a senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Fund Center which advocates for immigrants revealed that the Obama administration phased out the task force model in after concerns that law enforcement organizations authorized under it were racially profiling people when making arrests The first Trump administration considered bringing back that model but ultimately did not she commented Graber mentioned using this model the local law enforcement have majority of the powers of ICE agents They re functionally ICE agents she revealed Rights groups say that in areas where g agreements are in place people in the country illegally are less likely to reach out to law enforcement personnel when they re casualties of or witness to a crime for fear that functionaries will turn around and arrest them instead This is finding methods to terrorize communities stated Katie Blankenship an immigration attorney and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South They create immigration enforcement and local law enforcement which they are not trained or able to do in any sort of just manner Federal government and local law enforcement agencies deny those critics and maintain that officers follow the laws when detaining people There is no racial profiling commented Miami Margin Patrol chief agent Jeffrey Dinise at a current press conference along with Florida and ICE agents He explained that officers may stop cars after traffic violations They run the tag plates through immigration systems and can see the legal status of the person he declared Torres also disclosed that local law enforcement officers operating under g agreements aren t out on an island by themselves There s a lot of coordination with ICE agents and the local law enforcement officers They re not asking them to operate independently on their own Torres revealed How does law enforcement join Law enforcement agencies nominate officers to participate in the g plan They have to be U S citizens and pass a background check On its website ICE has created templates of the forms that law enforcement agencies interested in joining the project can use The training varies According to ICE s website officers in the task force model must complete a -hour online program that covers such topics as immigration law civil rights and liability issues As of mid-March about officers had been trained under that model the website mentioned although that number is likely much higher now as law enforcement agencies are signing up regularly For the jail enforcement model there s a four week training as well as a refresher subject The Warrant Amenity Officer model requires eight hours of training Austin Kocher a researcher at Syracuse University in New York who focuses on immigration affairs stated that training has dependably been a challenge for the g campaign It s expensive and often a strain on small departments to send them to a training center so the training has gotten progressively shorter he explained