Since February, three county sheriff’s offices in Ohio have signed agreements with the federal government to help with immigration enforcement.
It’s part of a nationwide trend to expand local law enforcement’s role in federal immigration enforcement. The agreements give sheriff's deputies in Seneca and Portage counties some power to enforce federal immigration law while performing routine duties and arrest people on administrative immigration warrants in their custody, according to the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In Butler County, some deputies will be able to participate in ICE-led task forces and identify “removable aliens” in the county jail on criminal charges.
Supporters of the program, which has expanded since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, see it as an opportunity to expand the reach of federal immigration officials to remove potentially dangerous people from local communities.
“It's beneficial to lock people up that have committed crimes in Ohio or come to the United States,” said Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones. “It's beneficial for my community to take people off the street and get them back to the country they came from.”
But detractors say the program risks violating civil rights, pulls law enforcement resources away from local communities and erodes trust in local departments.
“What these 287(g) agreements are doing is recruiting local law enforcement to be complicit in the violation of civil rights of people living in Ohio,” Cleveland immigration attorney Richard Herman said. “This police state mentality and action is creeping across the country, where is this going to end?”
ICE has signed more than 500 such agreements, including the three in Ohio, with local agencies across the country since President Donald Trump's inauguration in January, according to the agency.
Other agencies across the state have entered into contracts to hold people arrested by ICE. Since the inauguration, four jails in Ohio became holding centers for ICE detainees – there were only two in Ohio before Trump took office.
The 287g contracts coupled with the use of jail space is part of an effort by the federal agency to lean on local law enforcement to increase deportations and make good on Trump’s campaign promise to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants this year.
In April, a six-day sweep in Florida resulted in the arrest of more than 1,100 people, according to the New York Times. Immigration officers worked alongside the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the state’s Department of Corrections in what ICE said was one of the biggest single operations in a single state in the agency’s history.
This “force multiplier” strategy of working with local law enforcement is going to be implemented throughout the country, Madison D. Sheahan, the deputy director of ICE, told the Times.
What is 287g?
There are three different types of 287(g) contracts that allow local officials to enforce different aspects of federal immigration law: the Jail Enforcement Model, the Task Force Model and the Warrant Service Officer program, according to the agency. Earlier this year, Seneca and Portage counties signed contracts for the Warrant Service Officer program and Task Force Model, and Butler County inked Jail Enforcement Model and Task Force Model contracts.
With a Jail Enforcement Model, officers can identify undocumented immigrants in their custody who have pending or active criminal charges and place them into immigration proceedings at the time of release from state or local custody.
The Task Force Model gives officers limited immigration enforcement authority while performing their routine policing duties, such as identifying undocumented immigrants during a traffic stop and sharing that information with ICE, according to ICE. ICE supervisors are supposed to determine next steps from there.
Under the Warrant Service Officer program, ICE trains, certifies and authorizes officers to execute administrative warrants on undocumented immigrants currently in the custody of the law enforcement agency.
Expansion of 287g raises concerns
Immigrant and civil rights advocates have expressed concern about the agreements, which existed before Trump took office but have become more common as the agency ramps up efforts to remove immigrants in the country without the government’s permission.
The Task Force Model is the 287g model that gives local law enforcement the ability to arrest people on suspicion of an immigration violation, said Herman.
“That’s the one that unleashes the most terror and unconstitutional actions by these ICE designees,” Herman said. “Immigration violations are typically civil violations. So, you have criminal law enforcement personnel conducting civil investigations with the power to arrest without a warrant.”
That power easily could lead to racial profiling, said Margaret Wong, a Cleveland immigration attorney.
“It’s really for people who look different. Visibly, cognizably different,” she said. “Then they have the right to search because they don’t like me.”
Advocates say they’re on edge because they wonder about the motivation behind working with federal officials on immigration, after an election marked by racially charged statements regarding immigration on the local and national level.
Last year, Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, who signed two 287(g) contracts in March, referred to immigrants as "locusts," in a Facebook post. Zuchowski did not return calls for comment for this article.
In January, the Ohio ACLU sent a letter to sheriff’s departments across the state urging them to decline the program, arguing that participation could lead to civil rights lawsuits, erode public trust in local law enforcement and divert resources away from public safety.
“It is unwise to divert scarce law enforcement resources to subsidize the dragnet of federal immigration enforcement,” the letter reads. “While the Trump administration claims to target people with serious criminal records, DHS’s own data shows that these programs frequently target individuals charged with misdemeanors and traffic offenses, or no crime at all.”
Having deputies working on immigration diverts resources from investigating state-level crimes, and ICE doesn’t provide sufficient training for officers in the 287(g) program, Herman said.
Having local police and deputies enforce immigration violations may deter people from going to police when they are a victim of crime, said Herman.
Further, detractors say they are not convinced that the majority detained by the program are a danger.
“While the Trump administration claims to target people with serious criminal records, DHS’s own data shows that these programs frequently target individuals charged with misdemeanors and traffic offenses, or no crime at all,” wrote the ACLU.
Moreover, the statement continues, the first Trump administration expanded immigration “enforcement priorities” so broadly that in effect “all undocumented immigrants have become targets—even if they have lived in the United States for many years, have U.S. born children, and have never had a run-in with law enforcement."
”White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in January that the Trump administration considers all undocumented immigrants "criminals" and isn't seeking to deport only those who commit violent acts, according to Axios.
Being in the country illegally is a civil violation, not a criminal one. During his campaign, Trump falsely blamed immigrants for rising crime.
Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong said she expects law enforcement offices in larger cities to refrain from taking on 287(g) programs as they are too overworked and underfunded.
Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus have said they will not use city resources to enforce federal immigration law.
Instead of mass deportations, the Trump administration should prioritize immigration reform and increase capacity of federal immigration courts to help undocumented immigrants get legal status, Herman said.
Being undocumented is not necessarily evidence of criminality, he said. Sometimes it’s evidence that someone is willing to sacrifice to build a better life.
“You have the heart to get here,” Herman said. “You have the heart to make a life here and build something for your family, and you’re not a criminal.”
What’s in it for the local departments?
Supporters of the 287(g) program say it’s an opportunity to help remove potentially dangerous people from their communities.
“We can take care of getting these people out of our community and back to the country once they come,” Jones said.
ICE promotes the 287(g) program to local departments as an opportunity to keep their communities safe from “potentially dangerous criminal aliens.” Local law enforcement officers get access to ICE resources and training, according to the agency. ICE said it covers the cost of training.
Ten Butler County deputies are entering the 287(g) program and will be trained “any day now,” Jones said.
“They're basically deputy sheriffs slash ICE agents. And they're the only ones that can do that,” Jones said. ”I don't suspect they're going to be working 10 or 12 hours a day working on illegal immigration. I suspect it will be not often. And when it does, we can actually take action. We could not before.”
Jones’ willingness to work with federal immigration authorities has been popular with Butler County voters, he said.
“They like what I do. I've been doing immigration issues and dealing with it for 20 years. So I've done it a long time,” Jones said.
Jones said there have been some protesters who have opposed the department's immigration enforcement, but he points to his six election wins as evidence of wider support.
Butler County has also had a separate contract to hold ICE detainees, starting during Barack Obama’s presidential administration, but ending the contract after Joe Biden took office. With Trump back in office, the Butler County jail is holding ICE detainees again.
“President Trump, his first time when he was president, he was in the deportation business,” Jones said. “Then when Biden came in, that slowed up or stopped. They were letting everybody in. At that point, I got up one morning, came in, told them I was done with the ICE detainee program.”
In 2021, Jones canceled his contract, saying at the time that the Biden administration requirements made the program too expensive and a hassle, according to the Journal-News in Hamilton, Ohio.
“We had a president of United States before that was letting just people come in and no vetting, just filling the United States up with people that are here illegally,” Jones said. Jones estimated the Butler County Sheriff’s Office jail currently holds more than 200 ICE detainees.
How 287g works in conjunction with local jails
While local departments are not paid to participate in the 287(g) program, local jails do receive a financial benefit for holding ICE detainees.
Before Trump’s inauguration, Ohio had two jails in contract with ICE – the Seneca County Jail and the Geauga County Safety Center. Now, Ohio has six jails with contracts to hold ICE detainees.
The Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio in Stryker, the Mahoning County Justice Center, the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown and the Butler County Sheriff's Office in Hamilton became ICE detention centers in the last few months.
While the Department of Homeland Security has said federal detention centers are at capacity, the number of people in ICE detention centers in Ohio has grown slowly since Trump began his push to increase the number of deportations, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks the average number of detainees in ICE detention centers across the country.
In TRAC’s most recent recording on March 17, Ohio was holding an average daily population of 132 ICE detainees. On March 3, the count was 117 average daily detainees. Before the inauguration, the count was 113 on January 6 and 114 on December 23.