ICE'd Up

A new Texas law will turn sheriffs into federal immigration enforcers. Racial profiling and rights violations are sure to follow, experts say.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at a border security briefing with sheriffs from border communities at the Texas State Capitol in July 2021 in Austin, during the 87th Legislatures special session. (Photo credit: Tamir Kalifa via Getty)

Texas governor Greg Abbott will likely approve a new law requiring the state’s sheriffs to sign an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to act as immigration enforcers. Senate Bill 8, which will take effect January 1, allows the Texas attorney general to sue any sheriff who refuses to comply.

Abbott, who in 2021 established a state-funded system for immigration enforcement and detention at the Texas-Mexico border, is now seeking an $11 billion reimbursement from Congress for his efforts. Abbott has played a national role in MAGA’s anti-immigrant messaging, pledging to assist Trump in his mass deportation campaign.

President Trump vowed to deport millions of people but lacks enough personnel and funding. SB 8 will bolster the president’s deportation machine by forcing Texas sheriffs to sign memorandums of understanding with ICE, which is authorized under a section of the U.S. legal code known as 287(g).

SB 8 mandates that sheriffs choose among three enforcement models: the “task force” model, which allows deputies to arrest undocumented migrants during routine law enforcement interactions; the “jail enforcement” agreement, which lets deputies process immigrants with criminal charges for deportation under ICE supervision; and the “warrant service officer” model, which enables local police to serve administrative warrants for immigration violations inside jails.

The federal government cannot require state or local law enforcement agencies to use 287(g). In Texas, home to the country’s second-largest immigrant population, after California, Abbott is joining states like Florida in requiring law enforcement to work with ICE. “Cities and counties across Texas must fully cooperate with the federal government’s efforts to arrest, jail, and deport illegal immigrants,” Abbott’s office stated in a May press release.

In South Texas, the passage of SB 8 is instilling fear in communities already terrorized by ICE raids. Some law enforcement officials have expressed concerns that SB 8 will cost local taxpayers and undermine community policing.

Jon Taylor, associate dean and political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, called SB 8 “a huge mistake,” warning that it will compel county sheriffs to act as immigration agents, which is outside their training. “There are leaders in this state who have zero concern for the rights of migrants or the responsibility that government has toward everybody,” Taylor said.

Taylor fears that sheriffs will adopt the same ironfisted tactics seen in ICE operations. He said U.S. citizens are likely to be racially profiled and swept up in the enforcement.

“You’ve got supposed federal agents who are masking up and putting themselves in full body armor with tactical weapons,” Taylor said. “All this to arrest people who are basically working as cooks or dish cleaners. There’s going to be collateral damage.”

Under the 287(g) program, local taxpayers must cover the costs of arresting and detaining immigrants, a major reason it has been previously rejected. As an incentive, SB 8 offers grants to sheriffs based on their county’s size, but Taylor described these grants as insufficient to cover the program’s true costs.

Law enforcement officials have also criticized the law, saying that the mandate provides insufficient funding and that local jails lack capacity. Others worry that focusing on immigration enforcement will detract from their other responsibilities.

Protesters gather at Ervan Chew Park in Houston, Texas, on June 8, 2025, for a demonstration against Trump immigration policies and mass deportations. (Photo by Reginald Mathalone via Getty)

At a public hearing on the issue in March, Chambers County sheriff Brian Hawthorne, chair of the Sheriff’s Association of Texas, said some members do not support the bill because it undermines their autonomy. Hawthorne added that funding relief “shouldn’t be in a grant” and that it should have been built in.

Critics argue that the mandate to assist ICE increases the workload for officers. In March, Texas House Committee members asked a Texas Department of Public Safety official why his agency had not signed a 287(g) agreement. Lieutenant colonel Jason Taylor responded that “taking troopers, special agents, rangers, off the line to process” migrants would diminish “some of the public safety aspects of our agency.”

Additionally, local jail space is limited. Cameron County sheriff Manuel Treviño indicated he would sign a 287(g) agreement out of obligation but noted that his local jail is already at capacity.

Despite these objections from law enforcement, Taylor believes SB 8 moved forward because it aligns with MAGA’s political strategy. “It plays well with Republican primary voters coming up in 2026,” Taylor said. “They know, at least among their party’s voters, that border issues still ratchet up red-meat discussions.”

Taylor said the legislation is another step forward in the dangerous politicization of the military and law enforcement in Texas. It would not “surprise him in the least,” he said, if sheriff elections became another partisan battleground. “You’ve already got leadership who are attacking district attorneys because they let people out on bail or because they are not always willing to go for harsh sentences.”

The ACLU has described 287(g) as empowering sheriffs “notorious for racism, xenophobia, and civil rights violations.” A high-profile case involved Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In 2013, a federal judge ruled that Arpaio’s use of 287(g), among other policies, violated the Constitution by relying on race. Arpaio’s racial profiling, the court found, was targeting Latino U.S. citizens and legal residents. Arpaio hasn’t been sheriff since 2016, but Maricopa County taxpayers are still covering the costs, which will reach an estimated $352 million by 2026, for Arpaio’s many lawsuit settlements and court-ordered compliance requirements for the Maricopa County sheriff’s office.

Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio looks through a box of press he has saved related to his pardon in his campaign office in Fountain Hills, Arizona on September 19, 2023. Arpaio, who faced a jail sentence for criminal contempt of court, was the first pardon issued by Donald Trump. (Photo credit: The Washington Post via Getty)

State Representative Roland Gutierrez, an immigration attorney in San Antonio, voted against SB 8. He expressed concerns about the new arrangement. “We’re going to see more racial profiling,” said Gutierrez, who is a Democrat. “We’re going to see more warrantless arrests without due process targeting communities of color.”

The federal lawmakers who created 287(g) in 1996 claimed it was needed to remove “violent criminals.” The American Immigration Council, however, documented that officers operating under 287(g) often target people with no criminal record. About half the cases originate with traffic misdemeanors.

Under 287(g), ICE mandates training that includes “multicultural communication.” Depending on the enforcement model, training can last from four weeks to as little as eight hours. The task force model requires only a 40-hour online training. SB 8 creates no additional training requirements.

Gutierrez questioned the value of the federal training in light of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. Referring to these training requirements, Gutierrez said, “I asked the author of the bill, what does it mean? Does it mean that our local police are going to get to put on masks as well and look like Gestapo goons and abrogate the Constitution?”

The Trump administration is pressuring ICE to increase its arrests. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently threatened to fire senior ICE officials if they made fewer than 3,000 daily arrests.

To boost the quota, the Trump administration rescinded guidelines against migrant arrests at sensitive locations, such as churches and courthouses.

“When you start to erode the protections of the Constitution, you’re going down a very slippery slope,” said Gutierrez. “And now you’re going to empower those local agencies to be able to do just that.”

In the Rio Grande Valley, mixed-status families now check private online chats set up to warn about immigration raids. The private chats include photos and videos of unmarked law enforcement vehicles, along with clips showing a traffic stop. Or there may be a dark, hard-to-read photo of what someone claims is an ICE agent loitering by the doorway of a Walmart.

“Over here in Los Ebanos, three immigration vans and a helicopter are around Leal Elementary,” reads one message in Spanish. Another warns about a possible checkpoint with a photo of several police vehicles gathered on a back road. Some sightings are later confirmed to be ICE enforcement actions on the evening news. Many are false alarms. “Sorry, it was a traffic accident,” someone posts later about what they thought was a checkpoint.

Instead of alerting local officers to a crime, fearful residents now avoid the police at all costs. “You’re going to have people that are going to refrain from calling the police, people that are hurt or people that are injured,” said Gutierrez. “Out of fear for their own lives, out of fear of getting deported or picked up, people that will say, ‘Well, I don’t want to go to the hospital because I might get picked up by some government official.’”

In Tennessee, where the governor is also providing state funding to incentivize local police to become immigration enforcers under 287(g), a baby recently died after an undocumented caretaker was too frightened to call 911 for help.

Gutierrez called Trump’s mass deportation plan “a travesty to our humanity,” adding that “no amount of cruelty on this issue can fix what’s wrong.” He also argued for a pathway to citizenship that recognizes the economic role of migrants.

In Texas, 1.7 million undocumented workers face deportation under 287(g) and other federal efforts. The state has found that deporting these people would cost tens of billions. “They’re picking people out of restaurants, out of the lawn maintenance company, the construction sites. These aren’t criminals,” Gutierrez said. “But we are seeing the effects across different industries. And we all know the truth. We need them.”