For years, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office in the Suburbs of Indianapolis has wanted to associate with federal immigration authorities to identify and detain immigrants who are in the United States illegally and face charges.
President Joe Biden’s administration never returned his calls, Sheriff’s office said. But like President Donald Trump rebuke illegal immigrationHamilton County deputies could soon become the first in Indiana empowered to carry out federal immigration tasks and in one of the many nationwide that the Trump administration expects to enlist.
“We are definitely joining,” said Chief Deputy John Lowes to Associated Press. “We want to collaborate with ice to make sure we keep our community safe.”
Under Trump, Customs and Immigration Control of the United States It is reviving and expanding a decades program that trains local law officers to question immigrants in their custody and stop them for Potential deportation. Program 287 (G), called by a section of the 1996 law that created it, currently applies only to those already imprisoned or imprisoned by charges.
But Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, recently told Sheriffs that he wants to expand it to include local work groups that can make arrests in the streets, reviving a model that former President Barrack Obama suspended in the midst of concerns about the profile racial. It is not clear if that could allow local officers to detain people only to verify their migratory state.
On Friday, the governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, announced that the Florida road patrol had reached an agreement with ICE to interrogate, arrest and stop immigrants suspected of being illegally in the country and deliver them to federal authorities.
The agreement will help “comply with the president’s mission to carry out the largest deportation program in the history of the United States,” said Desantis.
Meanwhile, immigrants are alarming about the new patients who put local law officers in the application of immigration.
“All these agreements, in practice, have the same history of racial profiles, to sweep in American citizens or people who have a legal status, to have a chilling effect in terms of communities that inform the crime to the local agencies of application of application of application of The law, “said Nayna Gupta, policy director of the Non -Profit American Immigration Council.
In the early 2000s, many of the initial participants in program 287 (g) had agreements that allowed them to enforce immigration laws in their communities, not only in their prisons. But problems arose in several places, including Arizona.
In 2011, a Civil Rights Research For the United States Department of Justice, he discovered that agents in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, had been involved in a pattern of racial profiles, illegal stops and Latin arrests. The National Security Department He ended his agreement With the county.
The program became “the distinctive seal of the anti -immigrants of the extreme right” as a medium “to feed people on the basis of their ethnic origin in the deportation machine,” said Lena Graber, lawyer for senior staff of the center of legal resources of non -profit immigrants.
In recent years, ICE has offered two types of 287 (g) agreements to law enforcement agencies. A model requires four weeks of training and allows local officers to question the alleged non -citizens who are imprisoned for other positions and stop them for ice. The other model, which Trump launched during his first term, requires only eight hours of training and only allows local officers to serve federal immigration orders.
As of December, ICE had 135 agreements with the offices of the Sheriff, the Police Departments and the Penitentiary Systems in 21 states, with applications pending 35. Two thirds of the agreements were in just three states: Florida, Texas and Carolina northern. But agreements had not been signed during the four years of Biden as president, according to ICE data.
In his First day back in the officeTrump ordered the National Security Department to maximize 287 (g) agreements for local law officers to investigate, stop and stop immigrants. In a recent conference of the National Association of the Sheriffs, Homan said that the Administration is looking to lighten the regulations of the detention centers and shorten the training to encourage greater collaboration with federal immigration officials.
The president of the association, Kieran Donahue, applauded the announcement.
“There will be offices of the local bailiffs throughout the country, without a doubt, they will sign in this program,” Donahue told the AP.
But Donahue does not plan to register his own department in Canyon County, Idaho.
“I don’t have that type of labor,” he said, he added: “I have no space in bed in my facilities. Zero.”
The Department of Application of the Law of Florida in 2002 was the first to sign an agreement 287 (G) with the federal government, directing a working group for the application of immigration. Twenty years later, Florida became The first state to require All local agencies with county prisons to join the program or inform the State why they could not.
After a Venezuelan man who was illegally in the United States killed the student of the University of Georgia Laken Riley, Georgia approved a law last year that demanded that local law agencies request the program.
This year, republican legislators in approximately a dozen states seek to require or encourage cooperative agreements with ICE. A measure is sponsored by the state representative of Texas, David Spiller, a Republican who was also the author of a law Allow any agent of the law arrest migrants suspected of entering the country illegally. That law is waiting in the midst of a legal challenge.
Spiller said that mandatory participation in ICE programs is essential.
“President Trump and the homan border tsar cannot eliminate and deport all people who are a threat of public security for our State and our nation during the next year and a half without the help of our application of the local law,” he said Spiller
This year, Florida legislators have approved legislation that would assign millions of dollars for local immigration application efforts. Legislation approved in Tennessee It would order the State to request program 287 (G) and authorize subsidies for the local agencies that join.
The legislation that creates a state subsidy program for 287 (g) participants also approved the Indiana Senate this week and is pending in the Chamber. Democratic state senator Rodney Pol described him as a “very dangerous” and “very disturbing” proposal.
“We are putting people too much, particularly police officers, who will put themselves in situations where they will have to break their communities,” said Pol.
But Lowes said Hamilton County agents plan to focus only on people who are already in jail. Last year, he said, the prison reserved more than 500 people who believe they are not citizens for charges that included driving in drunk, possession of drugs, theft, robbery, sexual assault and other crimes. It is not clear how many there were illegally in the country, but ICE was involved in 64 of those cases, he said.
“We believe that this program will help us see a reduction in some of those crimes and help us to get some of the people from our community who are committing crimes that endanger our security,” Lowes said.
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