Legislature mandates sheriff-ICE cooperation in jails or streets

From the Texas Observer:

Over the weekend, the state House and Senate ironed out lingering differences in Senate Bill 8, a measure that will—assuming the governor’s signature—mandate previously voluntary agreements between Texas county sheriffs and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As passed, SB 8 will require all Texas sheriffs to apply for so-called 287(g) agreements, “or a similar federal program,” with ICE. The bill mandates that sheriffs allocate the necessary personnel and funding to enact these agreements while creating fairly modest state grants—ranging from $80,000 to $140,000 based on county population—to offset these costs. Beginning December 1, 2026, the state attorney general may sue sheriffs who fail to request or enter into ICE agreements.

ICE maintains three models of 287(g) agreements. Two are limited to the county jail setting, essentially involving jail staff helping ICE eventually take custody of undocumented individuals already booked on non-immigration criminal charges. Immigrant advocates point out that these arrangements can be costly for local governments and help grease the wheels of an often-unjust deportation machine, but they’ve generally sparked far less controversy than the third model: 287(g) “task force” agreements. These task forces further empower local police to act as roving ICE agents in the streets—detaining, interrogating, and arresting based on immigration status.

SB 8 does not specify which model county law enforcement must apply for, leaving this decision to the sheriffs. The Trump administration only recently revived the task force model, which had been terminated by the Obama administration in 2012 amid lawsuits and national controversy over racial profiling by sheriffs including the notorious Joe Arpaio in Arizona. As of Monday morning, 18 Texas law enforcement agencies have inked task force agreements, mostly covering small county sheriff’s departments but also the attorney general’s office and the Texas National Guard. There are roughly 70 jail-based agreements in the state as well.

“This bill mandates that every sheriff operating or contracting for county jails enter into a 287(g) program, with discretion of choosing which of the three enforcement models [to use], ensuring local control while strengthening public safety,” said bill author Charles Schwertner, a Republican senator from Georgetown—a rapidly growing, prosperous, and increasingly diverse Austin suburb—on the Senate floor Saturday. “The people of the United States and of Texas spoke very clearly last November regarding their concerns of illegal immigration and of criminal illegal aliens doing great harm to communities, to Texas cities and counties. I think it is incumbent that local law enforcement … act in collaboration with our federal partners.”

Democratic state Senator Sarah Eckhardt, of Austin, raised the point that the bill’s grant amounts would cover only a small portion of large counties’ expenses. To which Schwertner replied: “Their budgeting is, in my opinion, secondary to the goal of achieving the desired effect of identifying, prosecuting, and deporting criminal illegal aliens from Texas and the United States.”

On the House floor the following day, Houston Democratic Representative Gene Wu questioned whether—given the final bill’s language—ICE could reduce the available 287(g) options and effectively force all counties, even big blue ones, to adopt task force agreements. The Republican House sponsor David Spiller said that was an unlikely scenario and not the bill’s intent.

SB 8 was deemed a priority by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick from the session’s early days, and it is the most significant anti-immigrant legislation to pass this session. Over the course of recent months, the bill shapeshifted significantly.

As passed by the Senate in early April, the measure applied only to populous counties, and—as in the final version—it was silent on which sort of agreement it mandated. (It also included a now-absent clause that sheriffs would sign agreements “as offered”—which advocates feared would give the feds full control over the agreement type.) Then, just prior to the House floor vote on Memorial Day weekend, Spiller overhauled the bill with an amendment that—as in the final version—expanded the scope to all counties. But Spiller’s short-lived version also limited the mandate to one of the jail-based 287(g) models, specifically “warrant service officer” agreements—the least expansive of the three models—and it restricted state payments to that model.

The Senate didn’t go for this. Last week, Schwertner declined to accept the House’s version—specifically because it would have only defrayed costs for jail-level 287(g) cooperation.

Evidently, President Donald Trump also grew concerned with the state of SB 8: In a May 30 post on his platform Truth Social, shared by Patrick on X, the president indicated he had been monitoring the Lone Star State’s 287(g) legislation—and that he didn’t approve of Spiller’s changes. “The Texas House needs to pass SB8, as written,” Trump wrote. “I am watching closely. It is important to Texas, and to our Country!”

After the Senate declined to accept the House’s changes, the bill went to a conference committee, where members of both chambers hammered out the final version.

Ever since legislation mandating local cooperation with ICE was first filed this session, advocates have specifically feared the spread of the task force model, which could inaugurate in Texas a “giant ICE army.” Earlier this year, Governor Greg Abbott also signed a different kind of federal agreement that authorized the Texas National Guard to enforce immigration law in tandem with the Border Patrol—which may partly account for SB 8’s vague qualifier: “or a similar federal program.”

In the jail setting, ICE can already place so-called detainer requests on deportable immigrants, and in Texas these are mandatory thanks to 2017’s Senate Bill 4. So the expansion of jail 287(g)s may not constitute a sea change; still, advocates do have concerns it will grow Trump’s deportation capacity. Even if most Texas sheriff’s offices only elect to cooperate with ICE in jails, it is “going to increase the jail-to-deportation pipeline for people that are not criminals,” said Kristin Etter of the Texas Immigration Law Council. “Because you can end up in a local jail just solely on a traffic violation.”

SB 8 comes as the Trump administration continues to attack due process in removal proceedings and weaponize the immigration system against pro-Palestine activists.

A handful of sheriffs, the Houston Police Officers’ Union, and right-wing organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation have supported SB 8, calling it a public safety matter. But immigrant rights organizations, trade unions, faith-based groups, and others have voiced concerns that more local police and ICE collaboration will lead to racial profiling, an erosion of trust between cops and immigrants, and immigrants staying home for fear of encountering police.

On the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, ahead of the House’s vote, around 80 activists with the Texas AFL-CIO, Workers Defense Action Fund, Texas Civil Rights Project, and other groups protested at the Capitol. Many held up cardboard signs of monarch butterflies, which migrate across North America and have long been symbols of the U.S. immigrant rights movement.

The crowd chanted: “Se ve, se siente, el pueblo está presente” and “stand up fight back!” They also sang, including to the tune of a famous pro-labor protest tune but swapping key words to make their song about the Lone Star State’s immigration enforcement dragnet: “Which side are you on, Texas, which side are you on?” A few participants delivered impassioned speeches, which echoed through the building.

David Chincanchan, policy director with the Workers Defense Action Fund, told the Texas Observer during the protest that while SB 8 is being presented as a public safety measure, he believes it will make Texans less safe—particularly if sheriffs embrace the 287(g) task force model.

“Any time you have laws like this that empower local law enforcement to essentially serve in the role of federal immigration agents, what we see is that there’s an increase in racial profiling,” Chincanchan said. “This isn’t just a law that impacts folks who are immigrants, but anyone who might look like they are, according to local law enforcement.”

Justin Miller contributed reporting to this story.