Louisiana Governor Urges Local Law Enforcement to Partner with ICE

By James Finn

Source The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate

Louisiana state troopers are poised to start enforcing federal immigration laws under a controversial partnership that President Donald Trump has dramatically expanded in a bid to speed up immigration arrests and deportations.

Gov. Jeff Landry issued an executive order Thursday urging local law enforcement agencies, too, to join the Department of Homeland Security's 287(g) program, which lets Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials delegate certain duties to local cops working under their supervision. Federal agents alone typically have that authority.

Louisiana State Police recently entered an agreement under the 287(g) program, Maj. Nick Manale, an agency spokesperson, said Thursday. So have the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, spokesperson Taylor Brazan said, and the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections, according to Landry's executive order.

Manale and Barzan said that "operational details" of those agreements have not yet been finalized.

In his executive order, Landry, a Trump ally, directed remaining state law enforcement agencies to "explore, and where appropriate, enter into" 287(g) agreements. The order "strongly encourage(d)" local agencies to make those agreements.

"If you're here illegally and you engage in criminal activity, you are going to be deported or sent to jail," Landry said of the state's effort, which he is calling Operation GEAUX.

Trump's administration has pushed an aggressive expansion of the 29-year-old 287(g) program — which has long faced criticism over concerns about racial profiling and inadequate training for local officers — as his administration seeks more personnel for its crackdown on illegal immigration.

Landry's executive order underscores how Trump-allied state leaders could bolster the president's immigration ambitions as he seeks to marshal resources to fulfill his promise of deporting millions of people.

Leaders in other conservative states including Florida and Texas, where participation in the program has surged, have taken action similar to Landry's executive order to encourage participation in the 287(g) program.

A program 'radically expanded'

That program traces to 1996, when Congress approved it under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In 2009, before Democratic former President Barack Obama's administration placed new guardrails over the program due to concerns about racial profiling, there were only 29 existing partnerships. In 2014, Congress slashed funding for the program from $68 million to $24 million.

But the program returned in force during Trump's first term. The administration oversaw a spike in the agreements between the start of 2019 and the end of 2020, reaching over 150 active agreements heavily concentrated in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, said Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who studies immigration enforcement.

Landry's executive order Thursday follows earlier efforts by state leaders to get tougher on immigration.

The governor sent Louisiana Army National Guard troops to the U.S.- Mexico border last spring amid a showdown between Republican governors and Democratic former President Joe Biden over what the Republicans called Biden's lax border enforcement. A Louisiana bill approved last year, modeled after legislation in Texas that materialized as part of that debate, sought to empower local police to take on immigration enforcement duties. But a court battle over the fate of the Texas law ultimately doomed the Louisiana bill, too.

With Trump back in office, the federal government itself has elected to hand local law enforcement agencies that power.

The number of active 287(g) agreements nationwide has soared since he returned to the White House January, driven by sharp increases in Florida and Texas, according to news reports in those states. As of mid-April, there were 456 active 287(g) agreements nationwide, according to CBS News — more than triple the number in December of 2024.

"In the span of about two months, the Trump administration radically expanded the 287(g) program beyond anything I have seen in the past 15 years of close study of this precise policy," Kocher said.

Only two Louisiana law enforcement agencies, though, previously had active partnerships under the 287(g) program, according to data on ICE's website: The Bossier Parish Sheriff's Office and the Kenner Police Department. A partnership with the Beauregard Parish Sheriff's Office is pending. The State Police, Department of Corrections and Wildlife and Fisheries partnerships were not yet listed on ICE's website.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill's office is weighing a 287(g) partnership, too, she said on Thursday. Murrill is reviewing agreements recently entered by the state attorneys general in Texas and Mississippi, she said.

"I would not be opposed to it," said Murrill, a Republican.

Broad strategy

The expansion of 287(g) partnerships under Trump's second administration is part of a multi-pronged strategy he has implemented in his bid to accelerate immigration detentions and deportations.

FBI agents have been reassigned to immigration enforcement, and federal prosecutors are initiating an unprecedented number of criminal charges against people accused of reentering the country illegally. The administration rolled back a longstanding rule against detaining migrants in courthouses, schools, churches and other "sensitive" areas. Acting under that policy, ICE agents arrested several people inside a courthouse in Jefferson Parish last week.

A Trump spokesperson and an ICE spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the administration's expanded use of 287(g).

ICE has typically entered two kinds of deals with local law enforcement under the program: "jail enforcement" agreements, which allow deputized local officers to interrogate people about their immigration status once they're held in jail, and "warrant service officer" agreements, a creation of the first Trump administration under which local cops are trained and certified to execute immigration warrants.

Trump issued an executive order earlier this year reinstating a third, particularly-controversial version of those agreements: the so-called "task force model," which empowers local officers to conduct immigration enforcement during the course of their normal policing duties.

The agreements with Louisiana State Police and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries are both "task force model" partnerships.

Researchers with the National Immigration Forum, an umbrella organization of immigration advocacy groups, found that local agencies have faced lighter training requirements through the program under the second Trump administration. Deputized 287(g) officers were historically required to attend four weeks of training. Now, some local agencies report that training will be replaced by a five-day course, the group found.

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