More and more Pennsylvania police agencies are partnering with ICE
Sheriffs and constables are among those joining an initiative known as 287(g). Critics say they fear an erosion of community trust.
More local police agencies in Pennsylvania are signing agreements to help ICE enforce immigration laws, with the number of federal partners surging from 10 to 39 in recent months.
They range from the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office to the Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office to the Lansdowne Borough Constable’s Office in Delaware County.
Most are in the central and western parts of the state. In Lancaster County, seven agencies have joined with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The partnerships are part of a controversial ICE initiative known as 287(g), named for a section of a 1996 immigration act, in which state and municipal police departments work to assist the agency in identifying, arresting, and deporting immigrants.
“The Trump administration is very aggressively seeking to sign more 287(g) agreements,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council in Washington. “They’ve ordered ICE to sign as many as possible.”
ICE says the program helps protect American communities, a force-multiplier that adds important staff strength to an agency workforce that numbers about 20,000 nationwide. Opponents, however, insist that turning local officers into immigration agents breaks community trust with the police and puts municipal taxpayers at risk of paying big legal settlements.
ICE officials in Philadelphia and Washington did not reply to a request for comment on the rapid growth of the program.
The number of new agreements increases almost every day. In September, according to ICE, police agencies in 41 states had signed 1,000 agreements — up from 622 agreements in late May. An additional 16 agreements are pending.
Seven states, including New Jersey and Delaware, bar the agreements by law or policy.
The rise in Pennsylvania and across the nation has been driven by President Donald Trump, who has pumped incentive money into the program as he pursues plans to deport millions of people.
On Trump’s first day in office in January, he directed the Department of Homeland Security to authorize local police to “perform the functions of immigration officers” to “the maximum extent permitted by law.”
In the Philadelphia area, Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran’s decision to collaborate with ICE has sparked public protests and a lawsuit.
The sheriff says that his only goal is to make the community safer and that the department will not conduct random immigration checks or broad enforcement, but that “those who commit crimes must face the consequences regardless of immigration status.”
A disapproving Bucks County Board of Commissioners warned county employees that they could be personally liable for helping ICE, passing a resolution that said the alliance was “not an appropriate use of Bucks County taxpayer resources.”
Harran, a Republican running for reelection, has clashed for months with the Democratic-controlled county board.
Laura Rose, group leader of Indivisible Bucks County, an advocacy organization, called the increase in 287(g) agreements “a disaster in the making.”
“Some in local law enforcement are fully aligned with the Trump administration’s deportation agenda,” she said. “The more local police partner with ICE, the higher the costs to local taxpayers, and the greater the risk of costly lawsuits.”
Those financial costs do not include the human toll, she said, the “erosion of trust in local law enforcement, and the trauma of federal agents ripping families apart in our local communities.”
A spokesperson for Harran declined to comment on the growth of the agreements, citing pending litigation.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania and other advocacy groups have sued Harran to try to stop him from helping ICE. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday in Doylestown.
“We’ve known that 287(g)s are going to be a priority of this administration,” said Keith Armstrong, an immigrant rights attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “We’re seeing a very aggressive push.”
That includes ICE outreach to less conventional agencies, such as constables’ offices, which the ACLU believes have no legal authority to join the program, Armstrong said. He said ICE tries to bypass laws that require police departments to obtain advance approval from the local governing authority, like a board of commissioners.
And, he noted, ICE is now backing recruitment with money.
This month the agency announced it would begin reimbursing police agencies that join 287(g) — offering payment for costs that, beyond that of the initial federal training, previously had been borne by local departments and taxpayers.
ICE says that starting Oct. 1, participating police departments can receive up to 25% of the salary and benefits of each agency-trained officer. ICE also will pay quarterly performance awards, up to $1,000 for each participating officer, to local departments that successfully help the agency complete its mission.
“We encourage all state and local law enforcement agencies to sign a 287(g) agreement now,” ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said in announcing the funding program. “You’re not just gaining access to these unprecedented reimbursement opportunities — you’re becoming part of a national effort to ensure the safety of every American family.”
Texas passed a law this summer that requires most county sheriffs to participate in 287(g), and Florida approved a similar measure in 2022, ordering police agencies that operate a detention facility to take part.
The ICE program was established by Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
It designates three program models:
“Jail Enforcement,” to identify and process those with criminal or pending charges who may be deported. The “Warrant Service Officer” program to authorize local police to execute ICE administrative warrants at jails. And the “Task Force” model that ICE says provides community police with limited immigration authority.
Some police departments and local governments, including those in Philadelphia, not only avoid 287(g) agreements but also deliberately limit their cooperation with ICE.
They say that their so-called sanctuary policies create trust in immigrant communities and that undocumented crime victims and witnesses will not come forward if they fear being arrested and deported because they lack legal status.
The 39 Pennsylvania agencies with active agreements represent a small percentage of the overall police presence in the state, which has about 995 state and local law enforcement agencies, according to the Justice Department.
Nearly half the Pennsylvania agencies that have joined with Immigration and Customs Enforcement are constables’ offices, situated in places from the Philadelphia suburbs to the Pittsburgh area.
A constable is an elected, sworn officer who generally assists the mission of the courts, often by serving arrest warrants.
Lou Marcozzi, president of the Pennsylvania State Constables Association, said many constables signed up for the program because they need the money, given the pay structure for the position.
Pennsylvania constables do not receive a regular salary. Instead, they are paid through a fee-for-service system for each task they complete, so an agreement with ICE offers an additional way to earn dollars, Marcozzi said.
Other Pennsylvania agencies that have signed with ICE include the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, the Northwest Regional Police Department in Lancaster County, the Butler County Sheriff’s Office, the Somerset County District Attorney’s Office, and the Robinson Township Police Department in Allegheny County.