Partnerships between Texas sheriff’s offices, ICE booming
Partnerships between federal immigration agents and local law enforcement are booming so far in 2017 — growing to at least 59 agencies in 18 states, according to a large batch of contracts posted as of Friday on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s website.
Seventeen Texas sheriff’s offices are now approved to partner in ICE’s so-called 287(g) program — by far the most agencies of any state. By comparison, only three Texas departments were ICE partners in 2016 — and Harris County, the largest agency, dropped the program earlier this year citing costs and civil rights concerns.
Officers from the new partner agencies, which include Galveston, Montgomery and Waller county sheriff’s offices in the Houston suburbs, will receive additional training and computers they can use to cross-check immigration databanks for people who are arrested and processed in local jails for anything from a traffic ticket to murder.
Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset said his agency may send as many as 10 officers to get training and tools needed to “confirm who individuals are before we release them” and to determine whether they’re wanted by federal immigration agencies or by anyone else.
Other newly approved Texas partners include rural sheriffs whose turf runs along a major highway corridor that stretches south from Houston to the U.S.Mexico border.
The 287(g) partnership program had declined
under President Barack Obama. Under the program, named for section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE provides training to local officers on how to use its databanks and how to question detainees about their immigration status in local lock-ups.
ACLU lawyers and other civil rights advocates have argued that ICE’s detainer program, even without additional local law enforcement participation, already leads to civil rights violations and wrongful detentions and deportations through data mix-ups and errors.
But the partnerships have attracted renewed interest, particularly from Texas agencies, under pro-detention and deportation policies announced by President Donald Trump.
Local sheriffs who applied for the program in 2017 have expressed interest in getting additional help to screen inmates for potentially dangerous immigrants or fugitives and to better protect public safety. Texas now has by far the most ICE 287(g) partnerships of any state. By comparison, just four Arizona law enforcement agencies have them. In California, only the Orange County Sheriff’s Office partners with ICE.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez still honors ICE detainer requests but no longer dedicates 10 deputies to the county’s jail-based ICE partnership full time at an annual cost of $675,000.
Nationally, the program has grown from 38 departments in February to 59 as of Friday, based on the latest ICE contract postings.
Earlier this year, the ACLU had urged ICE via letters not to approve the applications of most of those Texas departments. Civil rights attorneys have raised concerns about Texas jail conditions and noted that several of the proposed partners — including Montgomery County — separately earn income from housing ICE detainees through detention contracts, giving agencies a profit motive to find reasons to detain people longer.
Astrid Dominguez, immigrant rights strategist for the ACLU, said Friday she doesn’t believe that having local law enforcement do ICE work will make communities any safer.
She said she worries the partnerships “will divert resources from essential public safety.”