Trump “National Police Force” Built on ICE Partnerships With Local Agencies Like… Wildlife Commissions?

In addition to deploying tens of thousands of federal agents from across the federal executive to carry out his deportation agenda President Donald Trump is rapidly expanding the configuration of state and local police going after immigrants through partnerships with U S Immigrations and Customs Enforcement The aggressive nationwide law enforcement regime all taking place under orders from the White House amounts to what scholars attorneys and now a federal judge say are initiatives toward the creation of a national police force And the ranks of ICE partners won t be filled with just local cops In at least three states the administration is joining forces with agencies typically tasked with environmental and marine protection lottery control and gaming to target immigrants This is quite a common tactic reported Charis Kubrin a professor at the University of California Irvine who studies immigration and crime There s this idea that we re going to get local not just police officers but nurses and teachers and other constituents functionaries involved in enforcing immigration laws It started largely with immigration using federal agents and a little-remarked-upon effort known as g to funnel funding to local law enforcement for partnerships The widespread ICE incursions and local police partnerships however have also been justified by the myth of an immigrant crime wave The research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on general safety There is this moral panic now about migrant crime This is rhetoric that is at odds generally with what we know about immigration and crime Kubrin reported The research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on population safety whatsoever We didn t really need this increased cooperation she declared The foundational assumption of this widespread immigrant criminality upon which all of these policies and practices are based is patently not true Related Trump s Trial Run for a Police State Recruiting and paying local police to do immigration work however is just one part of the bigger project of creating such a national police force noted the American Civil Liberties Union s Naureen Shah And critics are worried that with Trump s willingness to leverage state power for his own ends such a protection force could become a tool for carrying out the president s political agenda Shah who leads the ACLU s protocol and advocacy work on immigration explained Their larger project is to blur the lines between different law enforcement agencies in the military and create one national police force that is essentially under the command of the president Local Partners By funneling money to local police to do immigration work that falls under the federal ruling body s purview Trump is effectively bolstering a police force answerable to his own authority by slowly buying up state and local police on a massive scale The administration publicized last month that agencies had partnered with ICE to help target people for deportation Related A County Sheriff s Poll in North Carolina Has Become a Referendum on ICE s Deportation Machine The money is coming through a project that was falling out of favor prior to Trump s first term the g project named for the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that forms the legal basis for local partners to detain and begin the process of deporting people targeted by the federal cabinet For an administration eager to increase its sway over local law enforcement immigration makes for a good starting point because the administration has allocated astronomical sums of cash toward arresting detaining and deporting immigrants Paired with Trump s military deployments to U S cities the expansion of federal control over local police is the first step down a slippery slope stated Shah It starts with immigration and it s through immigration but it s not limited to immigration They re having federal law enforcement agencies scale up taskforces with state and local law enforcement so that when they talk about deploying into whatever city it is they are not deploying on their own just as an invading force she disclosed It starts with immigration and it s through immigration but it s not limited to immigration The Fall and Rise of g g agreements were on the decline before Trump was first elected in During his campaign former President Joe Biden pledged that he would end all g agreements made by Trump And in contemporary years local sheriffs ran for office on promises to refuse to work with ICE There s a reason why the federal establishment has largely been tasked with policing immigration and that s why there was a lot of resistance to g including among police chiefs disclosed Kubrin the UC Irvine professor Both tacks to reduce the agreements faltered Biden ended a handful of contracts but largely left the agreements in place And political pressure on law enforcement mounted to form agreements Several Republican governors for instance sued sheriffs who refused to work with ICE and in various cases won cooperation with Trump s deportation agenda Now the mixture of financial incentives and politics are driving a surge Since Trump took office partnerships that deploy state and local police to go after immigrants have increased percent Related Trump s Budget Just Passed the Senate Brace for a Massive Increase in ICE Raids The number of law enforcement agencies signing on to aid Trump s deportation machine is surging in part because local police agencies strapped for cash welcome additional funding The Department of Homeland Protection broadcasted in September that it would pay out performance awards and fully reimburse police for annual salary and benefits for each g officer including partial overtime coverage ICE is also offering signing bonuses of up to along with attendee loan forgiveness for new recruits and airing ads to attract police in at least a dozen cities In addition to shoring up their finances law enforcement agencies are also responding directly to political pressure from the White House I think it has to do with political pressure for these jurisdictions to get involved Kubrin noted There s lots of political pressure Much of the narrative around recruiting police to take on Trump s deportation agenda has taken for granted that police should be helping ICE carry out their work announced the ACLU s Shah It s not so much that ICE doesn t have adequate materials it s that they need local police on their side to carry out Trump s political agenda They re grabbing for local police because local police are all over the place Shah declared It s very linked to the larger threats of authoritarianism in the country and I don t see that in any of the coverage More Than Just Cops The massive nationalized police force taking shape as Trump expands his reach into state and local agencies around the country is not limited to just police In Florida for instance the Trump administration has ongoing g agreements with other state agencies including the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission the Department of Environmental Protection law enforcement division the Gaming Control Commission and the Department of Lottery Services Wildlife commissions in Louisiana and Virginia are also partnering with the administration to target immigrants for deportation as well as Virginia s Marine Materials Commission A spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Support noted the agency has not been requested to participate in any exercises related to its g agreement since it entered into the partnership this summer Since April the administration has also partnered with university police or trustees for at least nine Florida state universities Partnering with agencies that aren t traditionally focused on law enforcement is part of a strategy to enlist local representatives outside of police in enforcing immigration laws reported Kubrin The same strategy shaped laws like Arizona s infamous S B migrant racial profiling law and others modeled after it in states like Georgia and Indiana Kubrin mentioned she harbored a serious worry about eventually having to identify undocumented students in her own UC Irvine classes It s times worse she disclosed when you re asking biological officers and teachers to be also policing immigration The Invasion The creep of federal control into state and local police departments comes as Trump has sent more than troops to cities around the country In a rambling address to military leaders earlier this month Trump called to use American cities as training grounds for the military to fight a a war from within In a ruling last month against Trump s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles a federal judge wrote that Trump had used the troops as his own police force and styled himself as chief Almost three months after Defendants first deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles National Guard members remain stationed there the judge wrote Moreover President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal provision in other cities across the country including Oakland and San Francisco here in the Northern District of California thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent Though Trump s efforts to deploy the National Guard to Portland and Chicago have met legal roadblocks the president is signaling that more cities could see National Guard deployments in the coming months Several states have also agreed to use the National Guard to assist ICE None of it is likely to do much Kubrin explained These policies and programs are not cashing in on the promise that they will lower crime rates Kubrin disclosed But they are doing prospective harm in communities Mass shootings gun violence gender based violence corporate crime she mentioned Immigrant crime is a very small slice of the crime complication 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