The Trump administration plans to spend $1.6 billion through September 2027 in its partnerships with state and local police participating in immigration enforcement, a sum that far exceeds previous funding.
The massive money boost to the Department of Homeland Security through the 2025 reconciliation law fully funds the 287(g) program, according to the department.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement outlined its strategy for spending $100 million in the last fiscal year, $575 million this fiscal year and $475 million in fiscal 2027 for detention and removal operations under these agreements, according to a document publicly released earlier this month.
DHS’s Office of the Secretary and Executive Management also has spent $460 million for 287(g) ICE personnel assignments this fiscal year, according to Office of Management and Budget records.
Trending
The 287(g) program is part of a federal law that allows ICE to delegate some federal immigration enforcement powers to state and local law enforcement.
The fastest growing subset of agreements with local police, known as the Task Force Model, deputizes law enforcement to detain and arrest people they suspect live in the country without authorization.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently called the 287(g) program “the greatest partnership we can have.”
“We say to the local law enforcement and the state law enforcement … ‘If you run across these individuals, keep them,’” Mullin said during a press conference in June. “‘We will pay for your time and some of the equipment, just hold them and we will come pick them up.’”
The number of monthly 287(g) arrests spiked from 301 in January 2025 to 3,388 in January 2026 but dropped down to 2,630 in February, according to the Deportation Data Project.
New sign-ups under the program have soared, according to ICE’s database. Of the 2,179 partnerships across the country, 67% allow for street-level immigration enforcement. The Trump administration has advertised $7,500 for equipment per trained officer, $100,000 for new vehicles per partnership, salary and benefits reimbursement and overtime funds.
Since January 2025, the agreements have increased by more than 1470%, according to an analysis from FWD.us, a policy organization that opposes the partnerships between local police and ICE.
“It’s really important to be thinking about the effects on immigrants, but also the effects on local communities and citizens in the U.S. to all of this new money pouring in with very little oversight,” said Felicity Rose, the group’s vice president of criminal justice research and policy.
Even though the first Trump administration also saw an increase in 287(g) agreements from 35 to 150, the funding remained stagnant at $24.3 million annually, despite ICE’s efforts to request more funding, according to end-of-year reports the agency submitted to Congress.
“Without the funding increase, the program expansion will be challenged,” Matthew Albence, ICE’s then-acting director, wrote in a fiscal year 2019 report on the program. At the time, ICE unsuccessfully sought $77 million for fiscal 2021.
Before the 2025 cash infusion, the most money ICE had gotten for 287(g) had been $68 million under President Barack Obama, according to the yearly reports. The annual funding also dropped to $24.3 million during the Obama administration, which discontinued its use of the Task Force Model after findings of civil-rights abuses, including racial targeting by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona.
The $1.6 billion is not the only funding ICE could use for the revival of the local partnerships. Billions more from this year’s reconciliation bill can be used for the 287(g) program through 2029. ICE’s spend plan only covers the program through fiscal year 2027, and the agency didn’t respond to questions as to whether it would maintain the same level of funding after that.
The level of participation on paper doesn’t equate to local police actively making arrests. In Florida, 109 of the 274 agencies signed up for Task Force Model agreements haven’t made arrests, according to June data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Author
