Calling the program “legal racial profiling,” the new sheriff of South Carolina’s Charleston County on her first day in office terminated her department’s 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), The State reports. Kristin Graziano joins other newly elected sheriffs, like Gwinnett County’s Sheriff Keybo Taylor in Georgia, in moving to immediately end this flawed policy permitting local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents.
The State reports that the South Carolina sheriff called the 287(g) agreements “’no different to me than the slave patrols that happened in Charleston,’ Graziano said, noting the policing practice that began in South Carolina. It was designed to uphold white supremacy by surveilling, capturing, assaulting and killing Black people. Deputizing local law officials to enforce federal immigration laws today, Graziano said, is no different.”
The State reports that Graziano apologized for the department’s 12-year participation in the 287(g) program even though she wasn’t involved in implementing the agreement. As Daily Kos has previously noted, these agreements are widely considered deeply flawed policies, including by the Justice Department. Some immigrants have even been separated from their families after getting stopped for a simple driving violation, leading to distrust by immigrant and Latino communities in particular. Graziano told The State that about 2,500 families have been affected by the policy.
“This is like the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office being complicit in racial profiling of the Latinx community,” she said according to the report, “and I am sorry that this has happened to that community.”
Graziano, who defeated the incumbent Republican sheriff last November, said before signing the termination into place that she wanted community members “to be able to believe that they can turn to us, cooperate with us, when they’re a victim of a crime in our community. Our immigrant community currently does not have that trust in us, and that ends today with me.” In Georgia, Gwinnett County’s new sheriff similarly campaigned on ending the department’s agreement.
“There’s no evidence that the 287(g) program has done anything good, anything to affect crime, anything to keep anyone safe,” Taylor told Mother Jones last year. “It has created an atmosphere of severe distrust and made immigrants less safe.” Taylor moved to end the policy immediately after taking office last week. “Gwinnett County, you spoke and I listened,” he said according to Gwinnett Daily Post. “We’re replacing these programs with a couple of initiatives that will address some problems that concerns our community.”
Immigration Impact said that Florida has the highest number of 287(g) agreements at nearly 50. ”It surpasses Texas’ 27 agreements, the second highest in the in the United States. This voluntary, expensive program has come under fire for civil rights abuses since it launched in 2006.” The program grew in size nationally under the outgoing administration, which completely unshackled an agency that already felt like it was accountable to no one. Now as we push for accountability in a new administration, ending these contracts isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a political winner, as new sheriffs have shown.
“The goal of our public safety system is to ensure the safety and well being of all and the 287(g) program fails that basic test,” Frank Knaack, executive director of the South Carolina American Civil Liberties Union, said according to The State. “Charleston County must focus its resources on the needs outlined by the community and Charleston County voters made clear that it is time to end its 287(g) agreement.”
Both Graziano and Taylor further made history in their elections, Graziano as South Carolina's first woman and openly gay person to be elected sheriff, and Taylor as Gwinnett County’s first Black sheriff.