ICE Is Paying 15,000 Police Officers to Deport Your Neighbours

A program you've never heard of is turning your local Police units into ICE agents

ICE and Police take someone into custody (ICE)

Some of the most dangerous things ever done to democracy don’t come from coups or soldiers. They come from legal clauses written to look harmless, but in actuality, they close the seal on authoritarianism. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is one of them, a line of text that lets ICE hand over federal immigration powers to local police.

It’s an agreement that turns sheriffs into deportation officers, and it’s how a national machine of fear runs through county jails, small-town stations, and traffic stops across the USA.

As of this week, ICE has signed 1,904 Memorandums of Agreement for 287(g) programs covering 39 states and 2 U.S. territories. Nearly 1,904 local forces that have subordinated their own communities to the Trump regime’s enforcement apparatus.

Under 287(g), ICE signs what it calls “Memorandums of Agreement” (MOAs) with local law enforcement agencies. Once signed, local officers are trained by ICE, usually a short course, sometimes just a few weeks, and granted limited authority to perform immigration enforcement functions. They gain access to ICE’s databases, can interrogate people about their citizenship, issue immigration detainers, and prepare charging documents that lead directly to deportation.

ICE’s map shows the 1900+ local law enforcement agencies who work with ICE. (ICE)

ICE doesn’t need to be in the room. The sheriff’s deputies can handle it all. And when someone is wrongfully detained, ICE is offered an out. That wasn’t us, that was a local decision, despite the fact that ICE deputised that local department to make that decision.

What makes the current expansion different from anything before it is money. Under previous administrations, ICE covered training and IT infrastructure, and that was it. Now, the regime is paying full salaries and overtime for trained officers, start-up costs, and "performance" bonuses tied directly to immigration arrests.

Officers are being financially rewarded per detained person. Between 13,800 and 15,800 sheriff's deputies and municipal officers have now been deputised with federal immigration enforcement powers through the Task Force Model alone, more than the total number of new ICE employees hired in the same period. At least $137 million has already been disbursed to local agencies this year, with projections of up to $2 billion more before 2026 is out.

The ACLU's Naureen Shah called it what it is: "We've never seen this financial incentive scheme exist in any way with this program, and Congress never intended for ICE to be swooping in to these local jurisdictions and offering them money in exchange to participate."

In Florida, the state added its own layer: a $250 million pool distributed by the Chief Financial Officer at a press conference in March, where sheriffs posed with oversized novelty checks. This is bounty hunting with a badge, and it's federally funded.

That’s how this program was designed, as a system where federal power hides behind local faces. It’s immigration enforcement without federal accountability. Every agreement creates a local extension of ICE that looks like your police department but acts like a border patrol.

Florida is the clearest example of where this ends up. A state bill signed into law in February 2025 required all county detention facilities to sign 287(g) agreements with ICE by April 2025, with non-complying officials facing removal by the governor and legal action to force compliance. All 67 counties now have a 287(g) agreement in place. Florida is the only state in the country where every county sheriff’s office has signed onto the Task Force Model, the most expansive and aggressive form of the program. Every sheriff in the state. There was no opting out, no community consultation, no democratic check. DeSantis signed it into law and that was that.

Since we first began tracking 287(g) agreements, over 900 extra local agencies have signed on to the agreement, the largest ever increase of agencies signed on to the deal in any one year period.

And this is exactly why The ICE List exists. The ICE List isn’t just tracking federal agents, it’s tracking every piece of this decentralised enforcement network. Because under 287(g), the boundary between a county jail and a federal detention centre no longer exists. They’re connected by database logins, phone calls, and quiet deals. The jailer who holds someone overnight for ICE is just as complicit as the officer who knocks down the door at dawn.

The 287(g) program has been expanded and abused for years. Even after public outrage and court challenges, ICE keeps signing new agreements. The program lives on because it hides behind the language of “public safety,” but the data shows otherwise: most people detained under 287(g) have been charged with minor traffic offences or no crime at all. The only consistent pattern is skin colour.

In communities with 287(g), immigrants stop reporting crimes. Domestic abuse goes unreported. Witnesses vanish. Police lose the trust that keeps neighbourhoods functioning, and fear becomes policy. That’s the point, to make life unlivable, quietly.

So when we publish names on the ICE List, understand: this isn’t about one agency or one set of uniforms. It’s about the network, the counties, the sheriffs, the officers who lend their authority to a system built to dehumanise. Every name added makes the map clearer. Every exposure shows that ICE’s reach depends on local complicity.

287(g) is a colonisation of local law enforcement. It’s how the federal government builds an invisible army out of small-town police. It’s how democracy dies without anyone declaring it, and it’s happening right now, under your nose.

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