Partnerships between ICE and local police surge, report finds
Federal agents walk near the scene where a man was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during an operation in the Bronx borough of New York on Oct. 8, 2026. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
The number of state and local officers working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement has doubled in size in the last eight months, according to a new report from the immigration reform advocacy group FWD.us.
The group analyzed the federal ICE program, called 287(g), that deputizes state and local police for immigration enforcement. It used the agency's public records and information requested by the Deportation Data Project, which is based at UC Berkeley and UCLA and collects U.S. immigration enforcement data.
More than 29,000 officers were deputized by ICE between January 2025 and October 2026. That's far more than the 11,600 deportation officers directly employed by ICE.
Felicity Rose, vice president of research and policy at FWD, says her organization's analysis highlights just how big a role these partnerships have played in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement work. The program was created in the 1990s under the Clinton administration but was little used β until President Trump returned to office.
"These state and local officers are a key lever in the administration's quieter approach to enforcement. They're trading what used to be splashy urban surges, which we saw in Chicago and Minneapolis, for just routine highway stops now under the 287(g) program," Rose told NPR ahead of the report's release.
The most common and most aggressive form of these 287(g) partnerships, the Task Force Model, allows police and sheriff's departments to make immigration arrests. And, in return, as long as these local agencies remain in "active and ongoing participation in 287(g) enforcement activity outlined" in the agreements signed with ICE , they get money to spend on new cars, equipment and other enforcement resources.
The Department of Homeland Security has said that 287(g) is a critical tool to cut down on crime and illegal immigration.
Law enforcement agencies in Florida and Texas, combined, accounted for about half of the more than 47,000 immigration arrests made nationally between January 2025 and August 2026 through 287(g), FWD found.
That is not such a surprise β governors in both of those states have mandated local police sign these deals. And aggressive enforcement by state and local police in Florida and Texas has made headlines.
Some states not usually known for aggressive enforcement also recorded a spike in immigration arrests made by deputized officers.
The FWD.us report showed that 287(g)-certified officers in Wyoming, New Hampshire and Oklahoma were responsible for huge shares of immigration arrests in each state in recent months.
In Wyoming, deputized officers made 77% of the total immigration arrests in the state in April 2026 and more than 60% every month since November 2025, the report found. Similarly, in New Hampshire, the program was responsible for 60% of immigration arrests there in June 2026.
In June, close to 50% of immigration arrests in Oklahoma were made by state or local police.
Oklahoma's Highway Patrol signed all of its troopers on to 287(g), giving their officers the power to stop a driver and potentially make an immigration arrest on state highways.
That has had a chilling effect on immigrant communities living in the state according to Gabriela Ramirez-Perez, the immigration and economic security policy analyst with the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a think tank that analyzes state policy.
"Even though Oklahoma may not be in the headlines, it's definitely a hotspot for immigration enforcement," Ramirez-Perez said. "We can say that it's definitely resulting in a lot of fear in immigrant communities. People are changing their day to day routines to try to avoid getting on the highway, to try to avoid driving as much as possible."
The Justice Department earlier this summer offered $3 billion in funding for state and local agencies that join the program. The money can go toward staffing and new equipment in the coming years.
Florida has already given hundreds of millions of additional money to law enforcement agencies in the state in exchange for their participation in the program.
Rose, with FWD, says the promise of money appears to be a driving force behind the surge in 287(g) participation, and thinks it will lead to more partnerships in the future.
Law As Democratic-led states block ICE cooperation deals, local sheriffs push back in court Correction Oct. 28, 2026 An earlier version of this story referred incorrectly to the shortened name of FWD.us as FWRD. It is FWD.
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