Between mid-October and early November, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a pair of agreements that will authorize some state police within DPS’s Criminal Investigations and Highway Patrol divisions to effectively operate as ICE agents.
The move marks a significant expansion of what are called 287(g) task forces in Texas. Since late January, around 50 law enforcement agencies have signed such agreements in the state—primarily rural county sheriff’s offices but also the Texas National Guard and the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Late last month, the AG’s office announced it had made 35 arrests across the state under the program. But DPS’ newly inked agreements mark a sea change in the program, with the state police agency employing nearly 5,000 commissioned officers.
“We’ve heard reports from around the state already about local police working with ICE and kind of conducting these kinds of racial profiling stops where they see brown people driving a work van, and they’ll pull them over on a pretext, and then just immediately call ICE,” said Danny Woodward, a policy attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “So I expect that to ramp up. … U.S. citizens get subjected to these kind of horrific and brutal traffic stops and rights violations—and even children can be subjected to this kind of enforcement.”
Officers who are trained, per the agreements, will gain the powers to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or remain in the United States”; arrest without a warrant anyone the officer believes “is in the United States in violation of law and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained”; execute warrants for immigration violations; and prepare immigration charging documents. When exercising this newfound authority, local officers must seek guidance from an ICE supervisor—but are allowed to do so “as soon as is practicable” after exercising the authority.
“These [287(g) agreements] are just one piece in a collaboration with our federal partners that has been ongoing for years to combat illegal immigration and remove criminal illegal immigrants from our communities,” DPS spokesperson Sheridan Nolen wrote in an email. “While the department will not discuss operational specifics of the agreements, we can tell you that our participation in the program is statewide.”
Two other forms of 287(g) agreements exist, but both are limited to the county jail setting and have sparked far less controversy than the task force model, which was revived by President Donald Trump earlier this year more than a decade after it was terminated amid controversy over racial profiling. Two DHS inspector general reports from 2010 showed that most immigrants encountered or arrested through 287(g) programs around that time had committed either minor crimes or traffic infractions.
Even without the new agreements, one in four U.S. immigration arrests this year have been in the Lone Star State, according to statistics compiled by the Deportation Data Project and first reported by the Texas Tribune. ICE has also received a historic injection of cash from the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which contained $75 billion for ICE detention and removal operations. The bill also authorized new spending on the 287(g) program. Historically, ICE did not reimburse local agencies for enforcing immigration law under 287(g) agreements, but in September ICE announced it will “fully reimburse” the salary and benefits of trained 287(g) officers and that local agencies will be “eligible for quarterly monetary performance awards based on the successful location of illegal aliens.”
Last month, the Dallas police chief rejected a $25 million offer for his department to join the program; Republican Mayor Eric Johnson has since called on the city council to consider ordering Dallas police to sign on.
“The decision of these Texas agencies to enter into such agreements will lead to an erosion of safety … in addition to increases in racial profiling and targeting of immigrants, which are symptoms of this excessive, punitive and cruel mass deportation agenda,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a group that advocates for immigrants.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8, which mandates that nearly all Texas sheriffs apply for 287(g) agreements, “or a similar federal program.” SB 8 does not specify which type of 287(g) agreement sheriffs must apply for. Beginning next December, the attorney general may sue sheriffs who fail to request or enter into such agreements.
In January, days after Trump’s inauguration, Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order ordering “all appropriate state agencies to assist federal actors working under the direction of the Trump Administration with carrying out functions under federal immigration laws.”
That January order was “writing on the wall,” according to Fort Worth Democratic state Representative Ramón Romero, head of the House’s Mexican American Legislative Caucus.
“And who’s going to suffer? The Latino community, persons of color—that’s who’s going to suffer, including U.S. citizens,” Romero said. “[Imagine] you’re running and you don’t have your ID on you. … Am I going to get arrested and put in jail because some police officer decides to call me undocumented? And that’s not just me—that’s you. That’s anyone.”
DPS’ decision to deputize its officers as immigration agents comes some nine months after Florida did the same with its state police and, according to records obtained by the Observer, around the same amount of time after a Department of Homeland Security official had provided a copy of a task force agreement to DPS.
In an April Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs House committee hearing, Jason Taylor, the DPS Deputy Director of Law Enforcement Operations, called 287(g) an “important tool” to process immigrants in jails but didn’t support taking police off their normal tasks to perform the functions of ICE agents. “If we’re taking troopers, special agents, Rangers off the line to process [immigrants], then I think we’re diminishing some of the public safety aspects of our agency,” Taylor said.
Nevertheless, DPS has been coordinating closely with ICE on immigration arrests at Abbott’s direction.
Despite not having a task force model agreement on the books, DPS has been helping apprehend undocumented immigrants with no criminal record across the state. In April, DPS officers worked with ICE and the FBI in a multi-agency raid at a birthday party in an AirBnb outside Austin, where they arrested nearly 50 people, including children. The agency said it was a gathering of Tren de Aragua gang members, but no police ever offered evidence to substantiate that claim. Most of the party attendees were not criminally charged, but many were deported. Only two drug charges were filed after the raid; both defendants were deported and not convicted.
That same month, DPS also assisted FBI and ICE agents in arresting a Venezuelan construction worker in Bryan who was publicly accused by ICE of gang membership without evidence. Three months prior, according to records obtained by the Observer, DPS officers tagged along to a South Dallas home to help ICE agents arrest a Venezuelan man with no criminal record.
In June, DPS helped federal agents arrest three undocumented Salvadorans in Longview by stopping them for traffic violations. ICE agents promptly arrested the three immigrants, according to dashcam video and incident reports. None of the three Salvadoran drivers had criminal records in Texas, and DPS officers didn’t write traffic tickets for two of them. The only written ticket, per records obtained by the Observer, was for a brake light violation.
Local and state cops deputized to act as ICE agents will be able to essentially mix and match their authorities, enforcing federal immigration law in the process of enforcing state criminal and traffic laws. “In some ways, that gives them more power than ICE, because they now have both of those authorities,” said Woodward, the policy attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project.
But even before DPS signed up for 287(g), Woodward said, “We’re seeing them do that already.” The only difference now, he said, is “they’re no longer gonna have to call ICE.”
