Counties partner with Ice, giving officers the right to determine the immigration status and detain suspects for potential deportation

It could hardly have a more prosaic name. But the measure known as 287(g) – which allows the federal deportation force to deputize local police officers – has emerged as one of the Trump administration’s most potent tools in the crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The number of participating forces has fluctuated since 287(g) was introduced in 1996. But the scheme is now enjoying a resurgence boosted by the White House’s hostility towards so-called “sanctuary cities” that refuse to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

The focus for that resurgence has been Texas, which passed a state law last year enshrining the right of officers to determine the immigration status of suspects and work closely with Ice.

Fearing deportation, undocumented immigrants wary of reporting crimes Read more

At the end of February, Ice had agreements in 20 states with 75 law enforcement agencies, 24 of them in Texas – and almost all of them confirmed since last year. In the past two months, 17 memorandums of agreement have been signed across the country.



Liberal-leaning Harris county, which includes Houston, terminated its 287(g) agreement in February last year, but several surrounding counties – less populous and heavily Republican – have signed up.

One of the latest is the sheriff’s office in Rockwall, a prosperous county near Dallas.

As elsewhere, Ice-trained officers here will screen jail inmates, determine immigration status and hold those potentially eligible for deportation for pick-up by federal agents.



That choice has thrust this place with a population of about 95,000 into the heart of a conflict playing out nationwide, as critics of Trump’s hardline immigration stance argue that communities are being intimidated and families torn apart, while supporters claim that the unsparing approach reinforces the rule of law and enhances public safety.

Reached from central Dallas by causeway across the vast Lake Ray Hubbard, Rockwall has an island-like sense of separation from the big city. That difference is reflected in politics and demographics.

While Hillary Clinton took Dallas county in the 2016 presidential election with 61% of the vote, the Democratic candidate mustered only 24% in Rockwall, where 72% of voters backed Trump.

Far less diverse than Dallas, the county is 72% white and 17% Hispanic, according to census estimates – but the Hispanic population is rising fast.

Rockwall is the smallest county in Texas by geographic size but the sheriff’s profile gives it outsized influence in the national law enforcement landscape. Harold Eavenson was among a group of sheriffs who met Trump at the White House last February, and last summer he became president of the National Sheriffs’ Association.

Sol Villasana, president of the Rockwall branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens, believes that the agreement is an example of the kind of anti-immigrant grandstanding taken mainstream by Trump.

“We need to fix the immigration system in this country – but not by throwing red meat to racists and that’s what’s happening here,” Villasana said.

In an interview, Eavenson denied he had a political motive for signing up to 287(g). “We’ve had a broken immigration policy in this country for 40-plus years and now we’re trying to do something about it,” he said. “I thought it was something that’d be beneficial to us to have people trained in dealing with immigration laws.”

In a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through a freedom of information request, the sheriff’s office told Ice that “with the increased population growth for our area, we wish to expand [our] partnership and take a proactive approach to address the increase in illegal alien activity.”

Proponents of 287(g) say that departments such as Rockwall’s already cooperate with Ice and cementing that relationship reduces the risk of dangerous people slipping through the net, being released and potentially committing more crimes.

It eases pressure on strained federal resources, they say – and Ice is certainly busy around here. A Pew Research study found that Dallas had the most Ice arrests in the country in fiscal year 2017, as well as the second-biggest year-on-year increase: 71%.



287(g) helps Ice to identify targets at a moment when, under Trump, the agency is arresting undocumented immigrants in growing numbers regardless of the extent of their criminal histories.

Previously, low-level offenders were not a priority. Rockwall’s Ice document states that its five most-common charges for arrested foreign-born individuals are driving while intoxicated, possession of a controlled substance, possession of marijuana, public intoxication and assault.

There is evidence that undocumented people are increasingly wary of reporting crimes – a breakdown of trust that activists say will become more pronounced if the line between local law enforcement and federal agents is blurred.

“I have a very strong feeling in dealing with the people that come here illegally and commit crimes: they need to be shipped out. That’s really the reason that I decided to go with the 287(g) programme,” Eavenson said.

Decisions about where to set the bar for deportations, he added, are a matter for the federal government, adding that concerns about racial profiling are overblown since the programme no longer operates at street level.

But at a recent community meeting to discuss 287(g), talk quickly turned from specifics to more general worries, of the kind that are rife among undocumented immigrants in Trump’s America: that making contact with police is risky in any context, that committing a minor offence is a prelude to deportation, that the scariest rumours are reality.

Kenda Culpepper, the Rockwall county criminal district attorney, tried to reassure people in the hall that it is still safe to call the police. “If you are afraid of 287(g) then you are listening to false rhetoric because 287(g) only affects people who have been arrested and are already in jail,” she said.

Still, one man said during the bilingual event that saw a hundred people crowd into the room, “We have fear as we watch the news.”