As Landry, Trump push immigration hard line, 2 Louisiana agencies team with ICE

Amid calls from President Donald Trump for a nationwide immigration crackdown and an end to so-called “sanctuary” policies, at least two Louisiana law enforcement agencies have recently joined forces with federal immigration authorities, enlisting local officers to identify and detain undocumented immigrants in their custody.

In February, longtime Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington signed an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the federal 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement officials to engage in federal immigration enforcement.

Last week, the Kenner Police Department — which presides over a large Hispanic and foreign-born population — entered into a similar agreement, according to an ICE spreadsheet of law enforcement agencies currently participating in the program. BPSO and Kenner PD are the only two Louisiana agencies that appeared as of Wednesday.

Trump began his second term as president promising an unprecedented clampdown on immigration. As he had done in the early days of his first term in 2017, Trump in January ordered the Department of Homeland Security to ink more immigration enforcement agreements with local agencies.

Trump’s rhetoric was welcomed by powerful allies in Louisiana, where immigration hardliner Gov. Jeff Landry and Republican legislators have worked together on legislation aimed at ramping up local-federal immigration enforcement partnerships in the state.

Supporters of collaborations like 287(g) say they are needed to remove non-citizens with violent criminal histories, although studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens.

But critics of such partnerships say 287(g) agreements strain the resources of local agencies and leave them open to costly lawsuits.

“These laws are telling them that they have to do these things, even though, if anybody’s gonna be liable, it’s likely to be the sheriffs,” Matt Vogel, supervising attorney for the National Immigration Project, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

A representative for BPSO did not grant an interview request. And Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley was not available to answer questions by publication time, according to a spokesperson.

The first 287(g) agreement went into effect in 2002, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But the framework for the agreements had been in place since the Clinton administration through a section of an immigration law passed in 1996. The provision allows federal agencies like ICE to authorize local law enforcement officers to take specific immigration enforcement actions under the guidance of the agency. Different “models” of the program come with different authorized tasks.

The 287(g) agreements that both the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office and Kenner Police Department have entered into are under a part of the program called a “jail enforcement model,” which calls for investigating potential immigration violations among people already in the custody of local jails.

The agreements authorize trained deputies to investigate the immigration statuses of people in custody, place them into immigration proceedings, and issue immigration detainers – requests to hold immigrants, who would otherwise be released from jail — until ICE agents can take them into federal custody.

According to Vogel these detainers have a “questionable legal status.”

“If somebody has been arrested and they’re in jail and the judge throws out the case, they ought to be released,” Vogel said.  “But the immigration detainer asks the jail to hold them anyway. The problem is from a legal perspective that immigration detainer doesn’t have any legal authority to require additional detention.”

Representatives for ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Will more sheriffs and police departments join 287(g)?

The new 287(g) agreements in Louisiana come as the state is pushing for increased action on immigration from local law enforcement agencies. Last year, Landry signed a bill banning local law enforcement policies that discouraged cooperation with federal immigration agencies. Later that year, he signed a law that empowers local and state law enforcement to arrest people on the suspicion of being in the country unlawfully.

“They’re all part of a piece to push the sheriffs, whether they want to or not, to engage in certain kinds of immigration enforcement,” Vogel said.

In February, Attorney General Liz Murrill sought to enforce that law, taking legal action against the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office. Longstanding OPSO policy prevents the agency from investigating immigration violations and detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes. The policy was established in a 2013 federal court settlement over a case in which two men said they were illegally held in the city’s jail for months at ICE’s request.

Murrill’s legal challenge seeks to end the consent judgement in that case and contends that OPSO’s current policy violates the new law.

In an emailed statement, OPSO spokesperson Casey McGee declined to comment on the pending litigation, but said that the agency honors ICE holds “when doing so aligns with the legal obligations set forth in [the consent judgement].”

A representative from Murrill’s office did not respond to emailed requests for interviews or comments from Verite News and Gulf States Newsroom.

The Trump administration has now expanded the scope of the 287(g) agreements beyond local jails, allowing law enforcement officers to perform immigration enforcement duties on the streets. ICE recently revived a type of 287(g) partnership, called the “task force model” that authorizes trained local law enforcement officers to interrogate people they encounter during their normal duties about their immigration statuses and conduct arrests for immigration violations, which are considered civil matters. That model had been discontinued under the Obama administration due in part to allegations of racial profiling.

“The task force model is now the most full-throated model out there,” Vogel said.

The 287(g) agreements have been in place in a few parishes in the state in the past, including in the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, which appeared on a list of agencies participating in the program as recently as June 2024, according to a cached version of the government website.

The East Baton Rouge agreement drew concern from some community members, who worried that fears over interactions with law enforcement would cause reluctance from immigrants who were crime victims to be reluctant to report incidents or cooperate in investigations. The agency no longer appears on ICE’s list of partners for the program.

Elsewhere in the country, 287(g) agreements have received pushback, with civil rights groups claiming they empower sheriffs to target immigrant communities. In 2015, Los Angeles County ended its 287(g) contract. According to ICE documents, there currently are no agreements in California. And in Maryland, a bill that would block counties from participating in the 287(g) program is advancing in the state’s legislature. The bill’s sponsor has reportedly cited high costs and low returns for local sheriffs as one reason why the program should be banned.

In Louisiana, Vogel said, jail operators who enter into 287(g) agreements would also be stretching their resources, like bed space, to accommodate the program. But, he acknowledged, the pressure from state and federal governments might be too strong for sheriffs to push against.

“So far we’ve only seen these two,” Vogel said of the new Louisiana agreements. “And hopefully it stays there.”

This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.