Exclusive: letter from more than 60 law enforcement heads asks to soften push to include police in roundups, saying it makes their communities less safe

Police chiefs from across the US, including several from states that voted for Donald Trump, are resisting White House moves to force them to become more involved in deporting undocumented immigrants.

In a joint letter, more than 60 law enforcement heads are appealing to Trump in all but name to soften his aggressive drive to enlist police officers in the highly contentious job of deporting millions of immigrants living without permission in the country. They object to being thrust into “new and sometimes problematic tasks” that will undermine the balance between the local communities they serve and the federal government, and “harm locally-based, community-oriented policing”.

The letter is signed by 61 current and former local police chiefs and sheriffs, many of whom come from states won by Trump last November including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Texas. The political diversity and geographic spread of the signatories underlines the deep apprehension felt by many within the law enforcement community toward the president’s plans to beef up their role in rounding up, detaining and ultimately deporting huge numbers of people.

The letter, written under the auspices of the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, a coalition of senior law enforcement experts convened by the National Immigration Forum, does not mention Trump by name. But it indirectly references his administration’s efforts to force police to play a more central role in the deportation business.

It was released to coincide with a hearing on Tuesday of the US Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs, convened by Republicans under the provocative title “the effects of border insecurity and lax immigration enforcement on American communities”.

The letter writers – who include the commissioner of the Boston police department, William Evans; commander of the Los Angeles county sheriff’s office, Jody Sharp; and chief of the Salt Lake City force, Mike Brown – make plain their objection to being drawn into the immigration fray. They state bluntly: “Immigration enforcement is, first and foremost, a federal responsibility. We believe we can best serve our communities by leaving the enforcement of immigration laws to the federal government.”

Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants by widening the definition of those who should be removed, increasing numbers of federal immigration agents and detention centers, and co-opting police forces into the task. He did, however, signal late on Tuesday that he might be willing to endorse legislation that protected some undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he gave no details and failed to make any mention of the idea in his address to Congress.

The prospect of police officers and sheriff’s deputies effectively acting as immigration agents while going about their daily affairs – for instance, stopping a Latino individual for driving a car with a broken tail light and then apprehending them for visa violations – has spread fear across communities with large immigrant populations across the US.

But the letter suggests that there is no shortage of opposition to Trump’s plans within law enforcement circles. The authors put forward a very different vision, arguing that police engagement should be strictly limited to targeting “threats such as dangerous criminals and criminal organizations causing harm”.

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They also appeal to the Trump administration to draw back from its threat to penalize so-called sanctuary cities that are resisting the immigration crackdown. They point out that there is no agreed definition of what a sanctuary city is, and warn that a withdrawal of federal funds from those areas as punishment “would not make our communities safer”.

In one of his first executive orders issued from the White House, Trump tore up a recently implemented element of Barack Obama’s approach to immigration by rescinding the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), under which customised agreements were negotiated between the federal government and local law enforcement jurisdictions over joint working. The program focused on undocumented immigrants who had committed serious violent offenses, in contrast to the previous enforcement policy, Secure Communities, that swept up thousands of people with minor criminal convictions or no criminal history at all.

Cecilia Muñoz, former director of the White House domestic policy council under President Obama, told the Guardian that by ditching the PEP agreements that had been painstakingly reached with local police chiefs, the incoming Trump administration was paradoxically running the risk of making communities less secure. “For all the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric on security and safety, they are in practice discarding reasonable agreements in order to force local police chiefs into something that they think is unwise,” she said.

She added: “In the Obama administration we worked closely with local police officials to make sure our priorities fitted theirs, and as a result we concentrated on people who had engaged in serious violent crimes who we all agree should be removed.”

The Secure Communities program, piloted under the Bush administration and rolled out during Obama’s first term, expanded information sharing between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies. That allowed federal agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to sweep up large numbers of undocumented migrants arrested by police irrespective of the severity of their crimes.

The dragnet approach led to hundreds of thousands of deportations, with more than two-thirds of those targeted having only minor criminal convictions or no criminal history at all. Following an outpouring of criticism, the Obama administration abandoned the policy in 2014, leading to the creation of PEP.

Trump has now reinstated Secure Communities and vastly expanded Ice’s enforcement priorities to include not only those convicted or suspected of a crime, but also individuals they deem to be a threat to public safety. The administration has also called for a renewed focus on 287(g) agreements between local police and federal government, which allow local police officers to carry out immigration enforcement themselves.

After the Department of Justice found that such agreements led to racially biased policing and other research indicated that they placed a heavy drain on local resources, the Obama administration rolled the policy back.

At present, only 37 law enforcement agencies have 287(g) agreements, which operate exclusively in local jails, rather than empowering officers on the streets. Interest in new agreements under the Trump administration has so far been lukewarm.

The Guardian understands Ice has reviewed 287(g) applications from just six law enforcement departments in February, with the agency expecting to review eight to 10 next month. There are approximately 18,000 police departments in the US.