\n<\/p>\n
This article was produced for ProPublica\u2019s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n
Arizona law enforcement agencies are largely rejecting a fast-growing ICE program that lets local officers act as deportation agents \u2014 citing the experience of the state\u2019s largest sheriff\u2019s office, which was booted from the program in 2009 after a federal judge found deputies racially profiled and violated the constitutional rights of Latinos.<\/p>\n
Even in Republican-led communities known for backing immigration measures, law enforcement leaders are steering clear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s 287(g) task force program, which the Trump administration is using to enlist local officers in its mass deportation efforts.<\/p>\n
Of at least 106 municipal police departments, sheriff\u2019s offices and county attorneys in the state, nine currently have agreements to cooperate with ICE in making arrests, as of Oct. 15. And only four Arizona departments have signed on since January, amid a national recruitment campaign that has prompted more than 900 agencies to join.<\/p>\n
The program\u2019s explosive nationwide growth follows President Donald Trump\u2019s Jan. 20 executive order that, among other things, called for local law enforcement to \u201cperform the functions of immigration officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local police have three ways of participating in the 287(g) program. The first two are through the Jail Enforcement and Warrant Service Officer models, which restrict local collaboration with ICE to people who\u2019ve already been booked into their jails. The third way is through the Task Force Model, in which local officers \u201cserve as a force multiplier\u201d in federal immigration enforcement \u201cduring routine police duties,\u201d according to ICE.<\/p>\n
ICE did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n
Half of the agreements in Arizona are for jail enforcement, including the state\u2019s prison system, the only statewide agency. It signed on in 2020. The Republican sheriffs of two Arizona counties that border Mexico, Yuma and Cochise, signed 287(g) warrant service agreements for their jails this year, along with Navajo County, in the far northeast part of the state.<\/p>\n
The only local agency in Arizona to sign a task force agreement since ICE revived them in January is the County Attorney\u2019s Office of Pinal County, a Republican stronghold sandwiched between the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.<\/p>\n
ICE, under the Obama administration, suspended all task force agreements in 2012. The move followed a Department of Justice investigation that found the Maricopa County Sheriff\u2019s Office, which had a task force agreement under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, used \u201cdiscriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos.\u201d In 2013, a federal judge ruled that under Arpaio the sheriff\u2019s office had discriminated against Latinos during immigration enforcement operations, violating their Fourth and 14th amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures and to equal protection under the law, respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been guilty of anything,\u201d Arpaio told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica, despite the judge\u2019s rulings. \u201cThey went after me. But that\u2019s OK. And you can tell your audience I\u2019ll do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller, a Republican, said he intends to certify four deputies under the task force agreement he signed in August. Miller said these investigators will process immigration violations involving people they encounter during child abuse and drug investigations, instead of waiting on ICE officers. He said he does not foresee them participating in ICE raids.<\/p>\n
Miller prosecuted sex crimes in Maricopa County when Arpaio\u2019s 287(g) task force agreement was in effect. He said he remembers the \u201cchaos that ensued from that\u201d and doesn\u2019t want it repeated in Pinal County. \u201cWe have zero intention and we will not be participating in any immigration raids or task forces. I just want to make that clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller said he spoke with federal officials his agency works with before signing the task force agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Would we be required to join specifically an immigration task force?\u2019 That was my first question, and the answer came back as no,\u201d he said. \u201cIf that were one of the prerequisites, I was not going to do the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starting in October, ICE began reimbursing local agencies with task force agreements for the salaries of certified officers and paying \u201cperformance awards\u201d of up to $1,000 per officer.<\/p>\n
Miller said money didn\u2019t influence his decision. None of his four deputies will be assigned full time to the 287(g) agreement, he said, only as needed in the course of their other task force investigations.<\/p>\n
Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway, a Democrat, believes the financial incentives are a federal ploy to pull local officers away from their everyday duties and direct them to immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider the program to be illegal,\u201d said Hathaway, whose county shares a border with Mexico. He bases this view on court rulings on Arizona\u2019s landmark 2010 anti-illegal immigration law. The \u201cshow me your papers\u201d law was the toughest state immigration law in the nation at the time. But the Supreme Court struck down most of its provisions, leaving in place only one that allows local police to check immigration status as long as it doesn\u2019t prolong the public\u2019s interaction with officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Supreme Court said this is not in the realm of local law enforcement,\u201d Hathaway said. \u201cThis is entirely a federal issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
States including Texas and Florida have since enacted laws to more aggressively curb illegal immigration. Florida was also among the first to require all county law enforcement agencies to sign on to the 287(g) program. Other states, largely in the Southeast, have followed suit.<\/p>\n
Arizona\u2019s Republican-controlled Legislature this year passed a similar requirement for its local law enforcement agencies called the Arizona ICE Act. But the state\u2019s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed it.<\/p>\n
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, a Democrat who runs southern Arizona\u2019s largest sheriff\u2019s department, has vowed not to involve his deputies in deportation arrests. The county shares a 130-mile border with Mexico. Nanos has said his department is instead focused on preventing crime, and to do that it\u2019s imperative his deputies build trust with communities they protect, including migrant ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stance we take is: \u2018Look, you have a job to do and I have a job to do,\u2019\u201d Nanos says in a video released by his office this year. \u201cBut clearly immigration laws, enforcement of those laws, that is the federal government\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Maricopa County, home to a majority of Arizona\u2019s population, Sheriff Jerry Sheridan says he\u2019s hesitant to have his deputies certified to patrol with ICE, mainly because his office remains under strict court oversight related to its past experiment with the 287(g) program. But Sheridan has endorsed the ICE program\u2019s work inside local jails and said that\u2019s where Maricopa County got it right on cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re focusing on the criminal illegal aliens,\u201d he said of local jail partnerships with ICE. \u201cAnd that\u2019s really what a law enforcement agency should be concerned with, is people that commit crimes here in Maricopa County. And that\u2019s what I\u2019m concerned with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheridan is working to rebuild trust with Latinos that was broken by Arpaio\u2019s raids and sweeps, beginning when the sheriff\u2019s office entered a 287(g) agreement.<\/p>\n
For Hathaway, the Santa Cruz county sheriff, lost trust is his biggest concern with deputies enforcing immigration laws in a border county that\u2019s 83% Latino.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to have any animosity between the local population and our sheriff\u2019s office,\u201d he said. \u201cI want them to trust us and not think just because they\u2019re Hispanic, we\u2019re chasing them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This article was produced for ProPublica\u2019s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Arizona law enforcement agencies are largely rejecting a fast-growing ICE program that lets local officers act as deportation agents \u2014 citing the experience of the state\u2019s largest sheriff\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[10227,4861,5081,2081,15682,1551,536,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-29548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-agencies","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-enforcement","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-opting","13":"tag-police","14":"tag-program","15":"tag-propublica"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}