The 287(g) Program Turns Local Police Into ICE Agents
A program you've never heard of is turning your local Police units into fascists
By André Costa | October 4 2025
Some of the most dangerous things ever done to democracy don’t come from coups or soldiers. They come from legal clauses written to look harmless, but in actuality, they close the seal on authoritarianism. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is one of them, a line of text that lets ICE hand over federal immigration powers to local police. It’s an agreement that turns sheriffs into deportation officers, and it’s how a national machine of fear runs through county jails, small-town stations, and traffic stops across America. Currently, over 1000 local police forces have signed up to work for ICE, over 1000 forces that have ditched their own communities for the Trump regime’s secret police.
Here’s how it works:
Under 287(g), ICE signs what it calls “Memorandums of Agreement” (MOAs) with local law enforcement agencies. Once that happens, local officers are “trained” by ICE, usually a short course, sometimes just a few weeks, and granted limited authority to perform immigration enforcement functions. They gain access to ICE’s databases, can interrogate people about their citizenship, issue immigration detainers, and prepare charging documents that lead directly to deportation.
ICE doesn’t need to be in the room. The sheriff’s deputies can handle it all.
And when someone is wrongfully detained, ICE says, “That was a local decision.”
That’s how this program was designed, as a system where federal power hides behind local faces. It’s immigration enforcement without federal accountability. Every agreement creates a local extension of ICE that looks like your police department but acts like a border patrol. If you live in Florida, there is no escape from this tyranny. Every single Police and Sheriff office in Florida has decided to turn their backs on their citizens, and now work underneath ICE through the 287(g) program.
And this is exactly why The ICE List exists. The ICE List isn’t just tracking federal agents, it’s tracking every piece of this decentralized enforcement network. Because under 287(g), the boundary between a county jail and a federal detention center no longer exists. They’re connected by database logins, phone calls, and quiet deals. The jailer who holds someone overnight for ICE is just as complicit as the officer who knocks down the door at dawn.
The 287(g) program has been expanded and abused for years. Even after public outrage and court challenges, ICE keeps signing new agreements. The program lives on because it hides behind the language of “public safety,” but the data shows otherwise: most people detained under 287(g) were charged with minor traffic offenses or no crime at all. The only pattern is skin color.
In communities with 287(g), immigrants stop reporting crimes, domestic abuse goes unreported, witnesses vanish, while Police lose the trust that keeps neighborhoods functioning, and fear becomes policy. That’s the point, to make life unlivable, quietly.
So when we publish names on the ICE List, understand: this isn’t about one agency or one set of uniforms. It’s about the network, the counties, the sheriffs, the officers who lend their authority to a system built to dehumanize. Every name added makes the map clearer. Every exposure shows that ICE’s reach depends on local complicity.
287(g) is a colonization of local law enforcement. It’s how the federal government builds an invisible army out of small-town police. It’s how democracy dies without anyone declaring it, and it’s happening right now, under your nose.