House lawmakers say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) top official has twice committed to reviewing the flawed and racist policy that allows local law enforcement to enter into agreements with the agency and act like federal deportation agents.
Lawmakers said that acting ICE Director Tae Johnson, a holdover from the previous administration, made the first commitment more than a year ago in March 2021 in response to a letter from legislators. A second commitment followed that September after yet another letter.
“However, to date the agency has not announced a process for this review—including seeking input from community members, public safety experts and other stakeholders—nor has it described a timeline for it,” House lawmakers write in a Sept. 12 letter.
RELATED STORY: Immigrant communities describe 'relief' after Georgia sheriffs terminate ICE agreements
House lawmakers reiterated in the September 2022 letter that ICE’s 287(g) policy “remains dangerous and needs to be dismantled,” warning that a future anti-immigrant president could use the program “to turbo charge a deportation agenda, conscripting local police to identify and arrest millions of our immigrant loved ones and neighbors.”
This is a real fear because we already saw it under the previous administration. When President Barack Obama left office in January 2017, only 34 sheriff’s departments remained a part of the policy. The subsequent president, who incited his followers to attack police and overrun the U.S. Capitol following his defeat in the 2020 election, then massively expanded the program after taking office.
“The Trump administration expanded the 287(g) program five-fold, recruiting blatantly xenophobic, anti-immigrant sheriffs to join it despite their records of civil rights violations; and nearly all of these sheriffs remain in the program,” lawmakers said. “A recent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report found that at least 65% of 287(g)-participating agencies have records of civil rights violations, including police beatings and shootings, deaths in local jails, and unconstitutional arrests.”
That ACLU report revealed that one participating sheriff in North Carolina demanded his deputies “go out there and get me some of those taco eaters.” The ACLU said that while ICE terminated Sheriff Terry Johnson’s 287(g) contract following a 2012 lawsuit from Justice Department, he won it back under the insurrectionist administration.
While President Joe Biden as a candidate pledged to end 287(g) agreements entered into by the insurrectionist president, that promise has gone unfulfilled. The ACLU noted just days ago that 18 human rights experts with the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination have called on the Biden administration to end the policy altogether.
“This isn’t the first time the UN Committee has called on the U.S. government to end the 287(g) program—it also did so in 2014 during the Obama administration,” the ACLU said. “By then, it was already clear that the decade-old program was a vehicle for racist law enforcement officials to harass immigrants.”
Sheriffs who have since campaigned, and won, on ending these agreements have openly called them “legal racial profiling.” Charleston County Sheriff Kristin Graziano apologized to the Latino community when ending her department’s 287(g) agreement last year.
“Our constituents expect us to condemn local law enforcement’s abuses and support police reform– not reward serial abusers with federal immigration authorities, training and partnership,” lawmakers continued in their letter to Johnson. “It is time to dismantle this program and the administration’s partnerships with abusive local law enforcement agencies.”
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