This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatchs to get articles delivered to your inbox every week.
Arizona law enforcement agencies have largely rejected the rapidly growing ICE program that forces local police officers to act as deportation agents, citing the experience of the state’s largest sheriff’s office, which was removed from the program in 2009 after a federal judge ruled that its deputies were racially profiled and violated the constitutional rights of Latinos.
Even in Republican-led communities known for supporting immigration measures, law enforcement leaders are avoiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) task force program, which the Trump administration is using to mobilize local officials in mass deportation efforts.
As of Oct. 15, nine of the state’s at least 106 city police departments, sheriff’s offices, and county prosecutors had agreements to cooperate with ICE on arrests. Additionally, only four Arizona departments have signed on since January, amid a nationwide recruitment drive that has encouraged more than 900 agencies to participate.
The nationwide explosion of the program follows President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order specifically calling on local law enforcement to “perform the duties of immigration officials.”
There are three ways for local police departments to participate in the 287(g) program. The first two are through the Jail Enforcement Officer and Warrant Officer models, which limit local cooperation with ICE to people already booked into prisons. The third method is through a task force model, in which local police officers “act as force multipliers” for federal immigration enforcement “during routine police duties,” according to ICE.
ICE did not respond to questions from Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica.
Half of Arizona’s agreement concerns prison enforcement, including the state’s prison system, which is the only statewide agency. Republican sheriffs in Arizona’s Yuma and Cochise counties, which border Mexico, signed 287(g) warrant service contracts for their respective jails this year, along with Navajo County in the northeastern part of the state.
The only local agency in Arizona to sign a task force agreement since ICE reinstated the task force in January is the county attorney’s office in Pinal County, a Republican stronghold sandwiched between the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas.
ICE under the Obama administration suspended all task force agreements in 2012. The action follows a Department of Justice investigation that found the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which had a task force agreement under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, engaged in “discriminatory policing practices, including unlawful stops, detentions, and arrests of Latino residents.” In 2013, a federal judge ruled that under the Arpaio administration, the sheriff’s office discriminated against Latinos in immigration enforcement, violating their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures and their right to equal protection under the law, respectively.
“I have never committed any crime,” Arpaio told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica despite the judge’s ruling. “They chased me, but that’s okay. And tell the audience I’ll do it again.”
Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller (R) said he intends to certify the four deputies under the task force agreement signed in August. Miller said these agents will process immigration violations involving people encountered during child abuse or drug investigations, rather than waiting for ICE agents to respond. He said he does not expect them to participate in ICE raids.
Miller prosecuted sex crimes in Maricopa County while Arpaio’s 287(g) task force agreement was in effect. He said he remembers “the chaos that resulted” and doesn’t want it to happen again in Pinal County. “We have absolutely no intention of participating in immigration raids or task forces. We want to make that clear.”
Miller said he spoke with federal officials his agency is working with before signing the task force agreement.
“‘Do I specifically need to be on the immigration task force?’ That was my first question, and the answer was no,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do the program if that was one of the prerequisites.”
Starting in October, ICE began reimbursing certified officers’ salaries and paying them “performance bonuses” of up to $1,000 per officer under an agreement with the task force.
Miller said money did not influence his decision. He said none of the four deputies will be assigned full-time to the 287(g) agreement, but only as needed during the course of other task force investigations.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway (D) believes the financial incentives are a ploy by the federal government to lure local officials away from their day-to-day duties and into immigration enforcement.
“I think this program is illegal,” said Hathaway, whose county borders Mexico. He based his opinion on a court ruling regarding Arizona’s landmark 2010 anti-illegal immigration law. “Show me your documents” laws were the strictest state immigration laws in the nation at the time. But the Supreme Court struck down most of those provisions, leaving only one provision allowing local police to check immigration status as long as it doesn’t prolong interactions between citizens and police.
“The Supreme Court said this is not within the scope of local law enforcement,” Hathaway said. “This is strictly a federal issue.”
Since then, states such as Texas and Florida have enacted laws to crack down on illegal immigration more aggressively. Florida was also the first state to require all county law enforcement agencies to sign up to the 287(g) program. Other states, mainly in the southeast, followed suit.
The Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature passed similar requirements for local law enforcement this year, known as the Arizona ICE Act. But the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed it.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, a Democrat who heads southern Arizona’s largest sheriff’s department, has vowed not to involve his agents in deportation arrests. The county shares a 130-mile border with Mexico. Nanos said his department is instead focused on crime prevention, and to do that it is essential for lawmakers to build trust with the communities they protect, including immigrants.
“The stance we’re taking is, ‘Look, you have a job to do, and I have a job to do,'” Nanos said in a video released by his office this year. “But clearly, immigration laws and enforcement of those laws, that’s the job of the federal government.”
Sheriff Jerry Sheridan of Maricopa County, home to the majority of Arizona’s population, said he was hesitant to give his deputies ICE patrol status, primarily because his office has come under intense court scrutiny related to past experiments with the 287(g) program. But Sheridan supports the ICE program’s efforts within local jails, saying that’s where Maricopa County made the right decision in working with federal immigration enforcement.
“They’re focused on criminal illegal aliens,” he said of the local jail’s partnership with ICE. “And what law enforcement should really be concerned about are the people who committed crimes here in Maricopa County. That’s what I’m concerned about.”
Sheridan is working to rebuild the trust with the Latino population that was broken by Arpaio’s raids and sweeps, starting with the Sheriff’s Office’s 287(g) agreement.
For Hathaway, the Santa Cruz County sheriff, a major concern is a loss of trust in lawmakers enforcing immigration laws in the border county, which has an 83% Latino population.
“We don’t want to create animosity between local residents and the sheriff’s office,” he said. “We want them to trust us and not think we’re going after them just because they’re Hispanic.”
