The Return of 287(g): How Trump’s Immigration Plan May Leave Sheriffs Liable

On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court stayed a district court injunction that had found Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated the Fourth Amendment by relying solely on an individual’s race and ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, location (such as a car wash or bus stop), and type of work as grounds for immigration arrests. The reversal permits ICE agents, at least in Los Angeles, to treat these factors as sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion of unlawful status.

In the sole concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh characterized the encounters with ICE as “brief investigative stops” during which agents “promptly let the individual go” if they learn that the individual being questioned is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the country. This account is inconsistent with the increasing incidents of ICE agents violently detaining and arresting U.S. citizens, at times resulting in their wrongful detention for weeks. And while Kavanaugh’s opinion suggests that remedies remain available for any Fourth Amendment violations that occur during these raids, in practice, ICE agents and the agencies that oversee them remain largely insulated from legal accountability.

Federal agents, however, are not operating alone. While ICE is bolstering its reach with a recently expanded budget, it still lacks the capacity to achieve Trump’s goal of 1,000,000 ICE deportations in his first year. Given this, the administration has enlisted the help of sheriffs across the country by reimplementing the 287(g) Task Force Model (TFM) program—which authorizes local law enforcement officers to function as federal immigration agents—for the first time since it was disbanded for violation of civil rights in 2012.

Unlike ICE, these local agencies are not immune from liability. The return of the 287(g) TFM opens a critical legal avenue for civil suits against sheriffs and municipalities whose officers violate the law, serving as a method of recourse for individuals and a necessary check against potential overreach by the Trump administration. 

The 287(g) Program 

The 287(g) program was created in 1996 through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). It was designed to provide ICE with a “force multiplier” by permitting state and local police to assist in immigration enforcement. More specifically, it allows the Department of Homeland Security to enter into formal agreements with state and local agencies, which deputize officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement functions, including interrogating individuals about their immigration status, issuing detainers, and initiating removal proceedings.

Initially, the program operated through three models: the Jail Enforcement Model (JEM), the Task Force Model (TFM), and the Hybrid Model (HM). The JEM permits law enforcement to interrogate and assist in the removal of noncitizens already in federal custody. The TFM, in turn, allows officers to proactively identify, question, detain, and arrest individuals based on suspected immigration violations during patrols in the community. And the HM gave officers the authority to perform immigration enforcement duties under the JEM and TFM. The government terminated the TFM in 2012 for civil rights violations but continued the JEM. The fundamental civil rights issue with the TFM is its structure: Officers are instructed to seek out noncitizens, but unlike criminal behavior, immigration status is not readily observable. Without clear markers of legal status, race can easily act as a proxy for suspicion of legal status. Officers who carry out the TFM, like all other officers, cannot use race as the sole factor to stop and question an individual. They are bound by federal, state, and local laws that stipulate that “reasonable suspicion,” required for detainment, cannot be built solely on race.

Later, in 2019, the government introduced the new Warrant Service Officer Model (WSOM), which allows local officers to execute ICE immigration warrants on already incarcerated individuals. Despite civil rights concerns, days after beginning his second term, President Trump reinstated the TFM in its original form, reigniting civil rights concerns that led to its previous termination. Unlike the other 287(g) models, the TFM allows local officers to initiate immigration enforcement during routine patrols, absent an ICE warrant or underlying criminal custody. This degree of discretion heightens the potential for racial profiling and other forms of unlawful detainment or imprisonment.

A History of the Program’s Civil Rights Violations

Various Department of Justice investigations have documented patterns of civil rights abuse by sheriff’s offices that implemented the TFM. For example, a 2011 Justice Department investigation concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona “engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violated the Constitution and federal law” in its execution of the 287(g) task force. This included sending dozens of officers to predominantly Latino neighborhoods to make minor traffic stops with the ultimate goal of questioning individuals’ legal status and turning them over to ICE (resulting in a 9-to-1 racial disparity in traffic stops). In a separate 2012 investigation, the Justice Department found similar violations in Alamance County, North Carolina. There, investigators determined that sheriff’s deputies were instructed to “go hunting” for Latino individuals and to set up checkpoints in front of Latino churches and businesses. As a result of these findings, the Department of Homeland Security terminated its 287(g) agreements with both counties.

Oversight Challenges

The risk of civil rights violations is compounded by the lack of proper training and oversight, as documented by governmental oversight agencies. A 2009 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report criticized ICE for failing to articulate goals for the program and how local partners were to use their 287(g) authority. Deputized officers did not receive adequate training, and ICE failed to evaluate whether participating agencies complied with the agreements.

A 2010 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that ICE and its local law enforcement partners had not complied with the terms of their 287(g) agreements. It determined that the standards by which deputized officers were assessed contradicted the stated objectives of the 287(g) program, that the program was poorly supervised by ICE, and that additional oversight was necessary.

Following the 2009 GAO report, the Department of Homeland Security established an advisory board to evaluate agency applicants and vote on whether they should be accepted. This board included a representative from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties who monitored and advised agencies’ histories of civil rights abuses, acting as a safeguard against partnerships with those that had poor records. President Trump dissolved this board in early 2025, clearing the path for all law enforcement agencies, regardless of patterns of misconduct, to enter into an agreement.

Even as the TFM remained inactive for over a decade, the JEM and WSOM continued to suffer from inadequate oversight. A 2018 OIG report found that ICE was not ensuring that deputized officers completed required training. A 2021 GAO report found that ICE had failed to establish performance goals for the JEM and WSO 287(g) program. As of June 2025, ICE has not taken actions necessary to satisfy the recommendations from GAO, raising red flags about its ability to manage a more expansive, field-based enforcement model such as the TFM.

Additionally, while deputized TFM officers are currently required to undergo four weeks of training before going out into the field, “border czar” Tom Homan announced in February that he intends to cut the training period down to about one week.

Recourse Under 287(g) Task Force

Typically, there is little or no recourse for individuals whose rights are violated by immigration officials. Patrolling for illegal immigrants has historically been carried out by federal officers, including ICE. The Supreme Court, in its 1971 Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents decision, recognized an implied cause of action against federal officers for damages arising from the Constitution, terming it a “Bivens action.” In 1980, the Court stopped extending the theory to new factual scenarios, and since 1983, the Court has retreated from the theory altogether. In 2017, the Court narrowed the scope of Bivens claims to cases that have the same facts as prior cases and that do not involve any special factors that were not present in those prior cases. In the 2022 case Egbert v. Boule, the Court collapsed this new test into one question: “whether there is any reason to think that Congress might be better equipped to create a damages remedy.” As a result, under current law, individuals who violate constitutional rights while acting under federal authority are effectively immune from civil liability.

The reimplementation of the 287(g) TFM may open the gates to new remedies against illegal immigration enforcement actions. While the individual deputized officers are “considered to be acting under color of federal authority for purposes of determining the liability, and immunity from suit,” the local agencies and municipalities that oversee deputized officers are not afforded the same protections. By entering these agreements, sheriffs, counties, and municipalities may be held liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal statute that allows individuals to sue state and local officials for constitutional violations, when the plaintiffs’ injuries stem from policies or customs of the law enforcement agency. They may also face liability under state tort law. Many states have tort frameworks that mirror § 1983, allowing broad liability for agencies or municipalities. Some state constitutions protect rights beyond those recognized by the U.S. Constitution, thereby expanding the scope of actionable claims. For example, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2020 that the state constitution requires a warrant for persistent surveillance outside a home using a pole camera, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has found such surveillance permissible under the federal Constitution. Additionally, in 2017, the Iowa State Supreme Court ruled that an officer must terminate a valid traffic stop when the underlying suspicion is no longer present, and cannot go on to demand identification. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has determined that officers can check identification even when the suspicion for the stop has dissipated so long as it does not measurably extend the stop’s duration.

The legality of suing local agencies and municipalities for TFM actions is evidenced by the litigation against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which ultimately cost the county over $300 million in settlements. Even the more restrained JEM and WSOM have produced costly lawsuits for municipalities and sheriff’s departments. Those that have paid plaintiffs for civil rights abuses in the past several years include the Monroe County sheriff, El Paso County, San Juan County, Los Angeles County, Plymouth County, Henrico County, Nobles County, Allegheny County, Lehigh County, Bexar County, and Arapahoe County. This year, a federal judge ruled that Suffolk County could be held liable for up to $60 million in damages for officers’ execution of unlawful immigration detainers, and another judge found that Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay violated a U.S. citizen’s rights by holding him on an ICE detainer.

Lawsuits can act as a deterrent to police departments’ participation in the 287(g) TFM through two primary and interrelated mechanisms: financial consequences and public pressure. Police agencies generally have the choice to enter into these agreements, and when the cost is too high, they may choose to opt out entirely or adopt stricter policies and training to ensure that their officers will not violate constitutional norms.

Municipalities nationwide generally purchase insurance to indemnify themselves against liability for the acts of their law enforcement officers. These insurance policies shield them from financial responsibility in civil lawsuits. Because insurers control both the availability and the cost of coverage, they hold significant influence over police department practices. Insurance companies frequently leverage this power by requiring policy or procedural changes when they identify patterns of risk. Following high numbers of civil rights lawsuits, insurers typically raise their rates, demand changes in law enforcement personnel and policies as a condition of continued coverage, and, in some cases, remove coverage altogether. If the TFM model produces a surge in lawsuits, insurers are likely to respond with a demand in policy shift, induce higher rates, or reduce coverage, all of which may prompt agencies to reconsider their participation in the program.

Publicized incidents of civil rights violations have led to political pressure prompting sheriffs to leave the 287(g) agreement or be ousted at the ballot box. For example, Plymouth County (Massachusetts) Sheriff Joseph McDonald chose not to renew his office’s 287(g) agreement in 2020 following a suit from a coalition of civil rights groups. Donnie Harrison—who served as the sheriff for Wake County, North Carolina, from 2002 to2018, and first implemented the 287(g) program in 2007—lost his 2018 bid for reelection after his support for the WSOM and JEM became a focal point of the race. Harrison ran again in 2022 and notably campaigned on the promise of not rejoining the 287(g) agreement. What’s more, Joe Arpaio was Maricopa County’s longest serving sheriff. He was ousted in 2016 by a Democratic challenger following the numerous lawsuits against the department for violations of civil rights in its implementation of the 287(g) program, both when it had 287(g) authority and after Homeland Security ended their agreement. The following year, Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for violating a federal judge’s order to stop racially profiling Latinos in traffic stops while he was sheriff.

When the TFM was first suspended in 2012, only 27 law enforcement agencies had active agreements with Homeland Security. As of July, that number has increased to an unprecedented 473 with an additional 12 pending agreements. To meet President Trump’s ambitious deportation goals, even more local agencies will likely need to join. 

While the reinstatement and expansion of the program, with its history of abuse and minimal oversight, raises the danger of widespread rights violations, it also provides a novel avenue for accountability. Pursuing civil lawsuits against rights violations by local law enforcement will act as a safeguard against unlawful immigration enforcement practices and ensure the protection of civil liberties.