About 77 million U.S. residents now live in counties where local law enforcement agencies have been contracted and trained to conduct immigration enforcement actions on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a new report.
The number of state and local law enforcement agencies enrolled in ICE’s 287(g) program increased from 133 in January 2025 to 1,079 so far this year, the American Civil Liberties Union reported in its new study, “Deputized for Disaster: How President Trump’s 387(g) Deputation Force is a Powder Keg for our Communities.”
The program, which authorizes ICE to deputize local law enforcement officers, is being funded by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and its provision of $170 million for immigration enforcement and $14 billion for state and local efforts.
The president gave the program top priority in a first-day executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to authorize state and local law enforcement agencies to perform the functions of federal immigration officers.
“Funded to the hilt, ICE is now recruiting law enforcement agencies by offering millions in funding.”
The only states with no participating law enforcement agencies were California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, according to the report.
“Funded to the hilt, ICE is now recruiting law enforcement agencies by offering millions in funding,” the report says. “According to the Dallas Police Department, ICE offered it $25 million to join 287(g) if it detained 50 people a day — a financially based quota. ICE gave $38 million to Florida law enforcement agencies in September 2025. In October 2025, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles received $13.6 million in federal tax dollars to participate.”
The Dallas Police Department refused the funding.
All of Florida’s 21.9 million population is now covered by police officers, sheriff’s deputies or state troopers participating in 287(g), while 62% of Texans, or 18.3 million, live in counties with sheriffs under ICE contract.
“If the administration succeeds in its aims, the 287(g) program will mean an 80% increase in ICE’s already expanded capacity. However, ICE’s data, which is incomplete and contains inaccuracies, suggests we have yet to see the full impact of the administration’s enlargement of the 287(g) program.”
Local officers enrolled in the effort accounted for 6,905 of 220,000 immigration arrests during the first nine months of 2025, with 43% of those actions occurring in Florida where 287(g) accounted for 14% of immigration arrests statewide.
In some states, legislatures have required or encouraged law enforcement agencies to join the program, including Arkansas, Florida, Texas and Georgia, the report says. “In Louisiana, the governor issued an order directing state agencies to enter the 287(g) program. In 2025, the South Carolina attorney general wrote the state’s sheriffs encouraging participation, and the program grew by five times.”
Some states also have used taxpayer dollars to supplement 287(g) funds. Florida earmarked $250 million last year to support immigration enforcement and provided more than $14 million for local agencies to purchase leg irons, handcuffs, high-volume pepper spray, license plate readers and other enforcement-related items, the ACLU reported.
“In 2025, Tennessee created the Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division to establish a ‘whole-of-state-government approach to immigration enforcement’ and pledged to offer $5 million in grants as well as ‘technical assistance and training to help local agencies implement 287(g)’ and related coordination.”
Texas launched a $20 million grant program to offset costs law enforcement incurs in carrying out enforcement actions. The state has mandated participation in 287(g) for more sheriff’s departments.
As a result, local law enforcement agencies are becoming increasingly associated with the racist and harsh enforcement tactics now commonly ascribed to ICE. And local communities are becoming fearful of their own police and sheriff’s departments, the report claims.
“While in recent months the nation’s attention has rightly focused on the violence and abuse perpetrated by ICE and Border Patrol agents in places like Minneapolis, in Florida and around the country, communities are experiencing another kind of terror: Their own law enforcement agencies, working hand in glove with the Trump administration, are the perpetrators of blatant racial profiling, harassment and even violence.”
The report warns that using federal funds in some cases to pay the salaries and bonuses of local officers, and purchasing them the latest equipment, is a “recipe for civil rights violations.”
“By paying state and local law enforcement to participate in the 287(g) program, ICE is essentially using federal taxpayer money to redirect state and local agencies from local missions to the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.”
The end game could be even more sinister, the report suggests: “Through 287(g) and other means, the administration is building out a national policing force drawn from discrete federal, state and local police agencies — pivoting between purported missions related to crime, immigration and even what it calls ‘domestic terrorism.’ Through the 287(g) program, this force is currently turned on noncitizens; however, it is also increasingly being deployed against people who protest immigration enforcement and record the actions of federal agents.”