Partnerships between ICE and local police double in eight months, more than 29,000 officers deputised, report finds

The number of state and local officers working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has doubled in size in the last eight months, according to a new report from the immigration reform advocacy group FWD.us.

The group analysed the federal ICE programme called 287(g), which deputises state and local police for immigration enforcement. It used the agency's public records and information requested by the Deportation Data Project, based at UC Berkeley and UCLA, which collects US immigration enforcement data.

More than 29,000 officers were deputised by ICE between January 2025 and October 2026, the report found. That is far more than the 11,600 deportation officers directly employed by ICE.

Felicity Rose, vice president of research and policy at FWD.us, said the analysis highlights how big a role these partnerships have played in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement work. She told NPR ahead of the report's release that these state and local officers are a key lever in the administration's quieter approach to enforcement, trading the splashy urban surges seen in Chicago and Minneapolis for routine highway stops under the 287(g) programme. The programme was created in the 1990s under the Clinton administration but was little used until President Trump returned to office.

The most common and most aggressive form of these partnerships, the Task Force Model, allows police and sheriff's departments to make immigration arrests. In return, as long as local agencies remain in active and ongoing participation in the 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 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.us found. Governors in both states have mandated local police to 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 arrests by deputised officers. In Wyoming, deputised officers made 77 percent of the total immigration arrests in the state in April 2026 and more than 60 percent every month since November 2025. In New Hampshire, the programme was responsible for 60 percent of immigration arrests in June, and in Oklahoma close to 50 percent of immigration arrests in June were made by state or local police. Oklahoma's Highway Patrol signed all of its troopers on to 287(g), giving its officers the power to stop a driver and potentially make an immigration arrest on state highways.

Gabriela Ramirez-Perez, the immigration and economic security policy analyst with the Oklahoma Policy Institute, said this has had a chilling effect on immigrant communities living in the state. She said Oklahoma may not be in the headlines but is definitely a hotspot for immigration enforcement, resulting in a lot of fear, with people changing their day-to-day routines to avoid getting on the highway and to avoid driving as much as possible.

The Justice Department earlier this summer offered 3 billion dollars in funding for state and local agencies that join the programme, money that can go towards staffing and new equipment in the coming years. Florida has already given hundreds of millions of additional dollars to law enforcement agencies in the state in exchange for their participation. Rose said the promise of money appears to be a driving force behind the surge in 287(g) participation and will lead to more partnerships in the future.