Police chiefs are signing lucrative agreements to deputize cops as deportation agents without approval from elected officials — with some then finding themselves facing a wall of local resistance.

Some small towns put the deals with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on hold. Others have torn up the contracts. And typically mundane municipal meetings have erupted in passionate debate over whether local officers should assist federal immigration enforcement.

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The number of partnerships between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement across the country has exploded in President Donald Trump’s second term, according to ICE’s database. There were 150 contracts in Trump’s first term; there are now 2,631 and counting.

The Trump administration [*plans to spend*](https://www.washingtonsun.com/policy/trump-supercharge-local-police-immigration-enforcement) $1.6 billion on the program through September 2027, a sum that far exceeds previous funding. The money boost comes to the Department of Homeland Security through the 2025 reconciliation law, according to the department.

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. A DHS [*brochure*](https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/ero/287g/287gBrochure.pdf) features a simple equation: “Your Agency + Federal Law Enforcement = SAFER COMMUNITIES.”

In reality, the finances of the program don’t always pan out for the law enforcement agencies. A University of North Carolina [*study*](https://www.academia.edu/31571070/The_Costs_and_Consequences_of_Local_Immigration_Enforcement_in_North_Carolina_Communities_The_287_g_Program_The_Latino_Migration_Project) found that the pioneer in that state, Mecklenburg County, spent $5.3 million in the first year of an ICE partnership that it later [*canceled*](https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article222629390.html) in 2018, and nearby Alamance County spent $4.7 million during its first year, mostly in immigrant detention costs — until the Obama administration’s Justice Department [*yanked away*](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-releases-investigative-findings-alamance-county-nc-sheriff-s-office) the program over a finding of racially discriminatory policing tactics under Sheriff Terry Johnson. (The same sheriff inked a [*new deal*](https://www.ice.gov/doclib/287gMOA/287gWSO_AlamanceCoNC_05-21-2020.pdf) in 2020.)

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The ICE partnerships are [*dubbed 287(g) agreements*](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11898), in reference to the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows state and local law enforcement agencies to engage in work normally reserved for deportation agents. Nearly three in four agreements are for a “task force” model, in which officers are essentially deputized as ICE agents.