The American Civil Liberties Union released a report titled "Deputized for Disaster" this month, finding that the 287(g) program — which authorizes ICE to enter formal agreements with local sheriffs and police departments to carry out federal immigration enforcement functions — has expanded at extraordinary speed under the Trump administration's second term. At the start of President Trump's second term in January 2025, 133 state and local agencies were enrolled in the program. By March 20, 2026, ICE had signed 1,547 memorandums of agreement covering agencies in 39 states and two U.S. territories — a more than 900 percent increase. The program now covers communities where at least 77.2 million people live, or roughly 32 percent of the U.S. population. NPR had reported the program's rapid expansion in a February 17 investigation headlined "Little-used ICE agreements with local police have exploded under Trump."

The 287(g) program allows local law enforcement officers, after federal training, to perform immigration screening of individuals booked into local jails, coordinate immigration detainer transfers, or in some cases perform street-level enforcement. ICE has committed between $1.4 billion and $2 billion in additional federal funding to agencies enrolled in the program, and more than $137 million had already been distributed as of late February. Stateline reported in early March that while many local agencies have enthusiastically enrolled, others have struggled with the federal requirements, noting tensions between community policing goals and immigration enforcement mandates. The Idaho House passed a bill requiring all local law enforcement agencies to enter 287(g) agreements with ICE, making it one of the first states to mandate rather than merely permit participation.

The ACLU's "Deputized for Disaster" report documented what it described as the program's civil rights costs: officers using "actual or perceived race, ethnicity, or national origin" as a basis for stops; immigrants declining to report crimes or cooperate with police out of fear of deportation; and resources diverted from traditional public safety priorities toward federal immigration enforcement. Maryland, Maine, and New Mexico joined six other states in enacting legislation banning 287(g) agreements, while Florida and Georgia require local agencies to participate — creating a stark national patchwork of enforcement environments.

Conservative commentators and immigration enforcement advocates countered that 287(g) is a constitutional and lawful tool for removing criminals from communities, noting that the program's primary application is screening jails — not conducting street enforcement. Fox 10 Phoenix reported that ICE is simultaneously expanding its detention capacity with 92,600 new detention beds as part of a $38.3 billion enforcement expansion. The Washington Examiner and conservative law enforcement advocacy groups pointed to data showing hundreds of thousands of deportations in Trump's first year of the second term, arguing the program is achieving its intended goal of accelerating the removal of undocumented immigrants — including those with prior criminal records — from American communities.