A 287(g) agreement does not give every officer in a participating department general immigration-enforcement powers. It delegates specified immigration-officer functions to personnel ICE nominates, trains, and approves, under ICE direction and supervision. The exact authority depends on the agency’s currently effective signed agreement, its operating procedures and appendices, the approved personnel, and the agreement’s conditions.
What a 287(g) agreement allows
Section 287(g)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes ICE to delegate specified immigration-officer functions to qualified state and local personnel under ICE direction and supervision. ICE describes the program and its current models on its 287(g) program page.
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The agreement defines the delegated work; the program name alone does not. In a 2025 Task Force Model agreement with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), ICE nominates, trains, and approves selected personnel to perform certain functions within the agency’s jurisdiction. ICE directs and supervises those personnel for the delegated immigration functions, while SLED retains supervision of their other work. The agreement also sets out its own duration and complaint procedures; those terms should not be presumed to apply to another agency’s agreement. See the SLED Task Force Model MOA, revised February 12, 2025.
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Jail Enforcement Model
ICE describes this model as allowing designated officers to identify and process people with pending or active criminal charges who ICE considers removable while they are in the participating agency’s jail or detention facility. The details remain agreement-specific. For example, the Walker County Sheriff’s Office’s 2025 agreement limits participating personnel to functions in that agreement’s standard operating procedures and focuses on people arrested and booked into its jail. It says ICE assumes custody only after release from local custody. Those are terms of that agreement, not a universal rule for every 287(g) arrangement. Read the Walker County Jail Enforcement Model MOA, revised February 15, 2025.
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Task Force Model
ICE describes the Task Force Model as permitting local officers to exercise limited immigration authority during routine police duties. The actual functions, approved personnel, geographic scope, and conditions must be found in the particular agreement and its procedures. The SLED agreement is one example, not a template for every Task Force participant.
Warrant Service Officer agreement
A separate 2025 Warrant Service Officer agreement illustrates another limited, jail-based arrangement: facilitating transfer to ICE at a scheduled release from criminal custody. It is not interchangeable with the Jail Enforcement or Task Force models. See the Garrett County Sheriff’s Office Warrant Service Officer Program MOA, revised February 15, 2025.
What a 287(g) agreement does not authorize
- It does not grant blanket authority to an entire department. The delegation applies to personnel nominated, trained, and approved under the relevant agreement, and only within the assigned scope.
- It does not put all local police work under ICE supervision. In the SLED agreement, ICE supervision applies to the authorized immigration-enforcement functions; the local agency supervises other work.
- It does not make an immigration detainer a judicial warrant. ICE says only ICE officers and designated 287(g) officers may issue immigration detainers. ICE’s detainer guidance says its policy requires probable cause to believe the person is removable before a detainer is issued. That statement describes ICE policy for detainers; it should not be generalized to every action under every agreement. See ICE’s immigration detainer guidance.
- It does not make arrest, immigration processing, detainer issuance, custody transfer, and removal the same thing. These are distinct steps. A specific agreement may describe some functions or transfer conditions without establishing that every participating officer can perform every step.
- It does not itself guarantee reimbursement. ICE identifies the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), which can provide funding for specified incarceration costs, as separate from 287(g). The cited materials do not establish all local costs or the financial terms of every agreement.
How to check what a specific agency may do
Use the effective signed MOA and its appendices or standard operating procedures—not a generic description of the program—to answer a question about a particular officer or agency. Check these points:
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- Personnel: Is the officer nominated, trained, and approved under the current agreement?
- Function: Does the signed agreement or its procedures assign the exact immigration function at issue?
- Scope: Is the officer acting within the agreement’s jurisdiction, setting, and triggering conditions?
- Supervision: Is the delegated function being carried out under ICE direction and supervision?
- Terms: What does this agreement say about duration, amendments, termination, complaints, and any custody-transfer process?
These questions are a practical way to read an agreement, not a quoted statutory checklist. When describing a local authorization, identify the agency, model, agreement revision date, and relevant appendix. ICE’s program page can explain the models, but the signed local agreement determines the agency-specific terms.
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