By Michael Smith, Alicia A. Caldwell, Myles Miller, Bloomberg News
The federal government is supercharging its use of local cops to hunt down immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally as part of an unprecedented effort to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to deport millions of people.
Some 10,500 local police, county sheriffs, state troopers, university law enforcement and even lottery investigators have been signed up to stop, arrest and detain undocumented immigrants. Nationwide data reviewed by Bloomberg show these officers, across 40 states, nabbed almost 3,000 people since Trump took office through the end of July. Florida keeps its own tally under the same program, and its deputized cops have arrested another 2,500 people since then.
Combined, that’s a small fraction of the total number of immigration arrests this year, but almost double the amount that deputized cops made in 2024 under President Joe Biden’s watch.
Local law enforcement usually doesn’t have the authority to enforce immigration rules, but a nearly 30-year-old program called 287(g) allows the federal government to grant immigration arrest power to agencies that sign on. Trump has overseen a dramatic expansion at the start of his second term, with the number of accords surging seven-fold to almost 1,100 by September.
It’s “a force multiplier,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said in an interview.
But among the local law-enforcement agencies, some have been much more enthusiastic participants than others. About three-fourths of the 330 participating police forces in Florida, by far the largest ICE partner after Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through a law requiring them to sign up, have made zero arrests months into their partnerships, the state’s data show. Officials frequently say that it isn’t a priority for officers focused on fighting violent crime, thwarting robberies and improving community relations.
In greater Miami, which has one of the largest concentrations of Latino immigrants in America, police and sheriff’s departments have made about two dozen immigration arrests since August.
“We have other priorities in this community that I’m focused on, and immigration is not one of them,” Gregory Tony, the Democratic sheriff of Broward County, north of Miami, said at a county budget committee meeting in June. “It’s not within our purview, it’s not within our responsibility, and I won’t participate in it.”
Tony’s comments led Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to threaten to remove the sheriff from office, citing the state law that requires police to use “best efforts to support” federal immigration agents. As of Oct. 27, Tony’s deputies had made zero immigration arrests. Uthmeier declined to comment.
Over the decades, just a handful of local law-enforcement agencies cut 287(g) deals with ICE, according to the American Immigration Council. But Trump has hugely expanded these agreements to supplement roughly 65,000 ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents with additional forces.
St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick, who polices a 40-mile stretch of I-95 around St. Augustine, Florida, says his officers now routinely question people’s immigration status when they get pulled over someone for speeding or other infraction. He already has 66 of his sheriff’s officers trained and deputized by ICE, and is adding another 45.
This year his deputies have arrested about 700 people on immigration charges, mainly during vehicle stops, expanding a years-long practice of running a check for federal immigration violations when they suspected someone may be undocumented, he said.
“So to take this enforcement on as a sheriff when our new president took office was easy because we were kind of already doing it, holding people accountable,” Hardwick said in an interview. But now, he says, there’s much more support from the federal government.
It’s part of the president’s growing toolkit for his immigration crackdown. Even amid court challenges, Trump has deployed thousands of active duty military troops, along with combat vehicles and more than 100 Coast Guard boats, to the border, where crossings have plummeted. He’s also sought to deploy National Guard troops in major cities — including Los Angeles — though many of those efforts have been legally blocked or scaled back.
In the interior of the country, ICE recorded more than 196,000 arrests between Jan. 20 and Sept. 20, according to data posted by the agency. During that same time, ICE has deported about 180,000 people.
Police chiefs and sheriffs who have criticized the 287(g) agreements often point to the complexities of immigration law, limited training for their officers and the legal liabilities they could create.
Allegations of racial profiling have dogged previous iterations of the program. A Justice Department report in 2011 concluded sheriff’s officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, had engaged in profiling to target and arrest Latino residents.
Florida’s push for immigration arrests may have led to mistakes, according to court records and interviews with immigration lawyers.
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 21-year-old U.S. citizen, was headed from his home in Georgia to a carpet installation job in Tallahassee with two co-workers on April 16. Soon after crossing into Florida, a state trooper pulled over their vehicle for speeding and questioned their immigration status.
“I told him I was born here, showed them my license, my Social Security card, but he didn’t believe me,” Lopez-Gomez said in an interview in Spanish. The trooper handcuffed and arrested Lopez-Gomez for allegedly violating a Florida law against entering the state as an illegal alien, records show. It was the same law a federal judge had blocked as unconstitutional two weeks before.
A county judge threw out the case after Lopez-Gomez’s mother showed up with his birth certificate, but said only ICE could get him out of jail, Lopez-Gomez said. He spent 38 hours locked up before an ICE agent reviewed his documents and let him go. He says he is considering filing a lawsuit for unlawful arrest.
“I still don’t understand why they did that to me,” Lopez-Gomez said from his home in Cairo, Georgia. “Every day I leave the house scared they will try to deport me again – the anxiety gets the best of me.”
The Florida Highway Patrol declined to comment.
DeSantis has aggressively gone after towns and sheriffs perceived as resisting working with ICE.
Fort Myers, a town on the Gulf Coast, backed down from refusing to sign a deal with ICE after Uthmeier threatened to remove city commissioners from office for violating state law.
A few miles west of downtown Miami in Doral, a heavily Latino city where Trump owns a golf course, Police Chief Edwin Lopez has no plans to order his officers to hunt for undocumented immigrants even though the department plans to sign a 287(g) agreement.
“I do a lot of educating the community and let them know that the police department is here to protect and serve,” Lopez, the son of Cuban immigrants, said in an interview. “We’re not necessarily arbitrarily requesting or asking questions in terms of immigration status.”
Among the state agencies that has made immigration arrests is the Florida Lottery’s security division. The force of roughly a dozen officers is charged with securing lottery drawings, investigating fake tickets and running background checks on retailers. But on April 24, it signed a 287(g) agreement, and it has since made 10 immigration arrests. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment.
One major incentive for law-enforcement agencies to sign the 287(g) agreements is the promise of a cash infusion. ICE is now offering to fully reimburse salary and benefits and part of the overtime for each trained 287(g) officer, and to pay quarterly bonuses of as much as $1,000 if certain arrest targets are met.
The money hasn’t always worked.
Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux turned down a request from ICE to join the 287(g) program that came with a promise of $25 million in reimbursements for salaries and operational costs.
“Our officers are focused on serving our city by answering 911 calls and aggressively fighting violent crime,” Comeaux said in a statement. “Federal authorities have a different mission with the same importance.”
In Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, Sheriff Mike Chapman has an agreement to hold inmates flagged by ICE until federal officers can take custody.
But he isn’t going to order his deputies to become immigration agents. He wants them to focus on local safety and community engagement.
“People may not like what we’re doing, but they trust us,” he said in an interview. “They realize it’s important to keep them safe, and that’s what we’re about.”
Some cops just don’t know what to do with their partnership with ICE, like Sheriff K. Zane Hopkins in Nebraska’s Banner County. His desolate 745-square-mile rectangle in the southwest part of the state has fewer than 700 residents, making it home to “more cows than people.”
Hopkins, a Republican elected in 2023, signed a 287(g) agreement in part because Banner somehow ended up on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of so-called “sanctuary” counties, which restrict local police from assisting federal immigration agents. Signing up with ICE was an effort to help clear up any misconceptions. But a traffic stop that involves an immigration issue, he said, can keep him or his sole deputy occupied for an hour or more.
Hopkins recalls two traffic stops since 2023 that involved a driver suspected of being in violation of federal immigration laws, and both times ICE agents opted not to respond. The county is a nearly seven-hour drive from Nebraska’s lone ICE office in Omaha.
“We are not actively going out and looking for people.” Hopkins said of immigration enforcement. “If we do it, we do it as part of our daily duties. I’m not super worried about trying to enforce it and I’m not going to chase reimbursement.”
—With assistance from Fabiola Zerpa and Phil Kuntz.
©2025 Bloomberg News. Visit at bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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