TL;DR: An NPR investigation published May 5, 2026 (picked up by Georgia Public Broadcasting on May 7) reveals that ICE is now paying local police departments to do its job. Sign a 287(g) agreement, and DHS covers the officers' full salaries, overtime, $100,000 for new vehicles, equipment add-ons, and "performance bonuses" tied to immigration arrests. FWD.us projects total payouts could hit $2 billion in 2026 alone, climbing to $3.4 billion by 2027. That would dwarf the two largest existing federal grant programs to local police. The ACLU calls it a financial scheme Congress never authorized. State legislators in New Mexico, Maine, and Maryland already banned 287(g) agreements. Sanctuary jurisdictions are watching DOJ lawsuits roll in.
The Pitch ICE Is Making to Your Sheriff
Here's how the deal works, according to the May 5 NPR reporting and the FWD.us February 16, 2026 brief.[1][2] Sign a 287(g) agreement. ICE will:
- Reimburse the full salary and benefits of every officer trained to enforce immigration law
- Pay overtime
- Cover startup costs
- Hand over $100,000 per agency for a new vehicle
- Throw in equipment: license plate readers, body armor, fingerprint scanners, Apple AirPods that translate Spanish in real time
- Pay "performance" bonuses based on how many undocumented people the officers find
Per-arrest bounty money. Paid by a federal agency. To officers your county elected to do local policing.
Naureen Shah, the ACLU's director of government affairs for immigration, told NPR what this looks like to a cash-strapped department: "Police departments that are strapped for cash, this could be a lifeline for them that appears to be pretty easy."[1]
The Numbers
$2 Billion
FWD.us projection of total 287(g) payouts to local agencies in 2026 if every signed agency receives what DHS promised[2]
$3.4 Billion
Projected by 2027 at the current sign-up rate[2]
13,800 to 15,800
Local police and sheriff's deputies already deputized as immigration agents[2]
1,700+
Local agencies in 287(g) partnerships under Trump's second term, up from 135[1]
$137 Million
Already distributed by DHS as of the FWD.us brief[2]
$100,000
Per-agency vehicle payment offered on signing
This Money Dwarfs Existing Police Grant Programs
Felicity Rose, vice president of criminal justice research and policy at FWD.us, put the figure in context: "This would be by far the largest infusion of federal funding into local law enforcement since the 1990s COPS grants, which increased low-level arrests while having no significant impact on crime."[2]
Two federal grant streams currently fund local cops at scale:
- COPS: Community Oriented Policing Services. The Clinton-era program that gave America 100,000 new cops
- JAG-Byrne: Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants. The largest source of federal criminal justice funding to states and territories
The 287(g) money, if every signed agency gets what's promised, would be bigger than both. Combined.
And nobody can tell you exactly where it's going. Rose again: "The normal government process in the United States is that we know where taxpayer money goes, because it's really important that it not be wasted. It's very, very concerning that there's so little transparency in this money."[1]
NPR contacted DHS for specifics on total awards. DHS declined to provide them. Most of the dozens of police and sheriff's departments NPR reached out to didn't respond either.[1]
Who's Cashing the Checks
Florida and Texas lead. Both have set up state-level grant pools that flow on top of the federal money. Florida built a $250 million state pool. Sheriffs received ceremonial checks at a March press conference.[1]
From the NPR/GPB reporting, here's a partial roster of awards documented so far:[1]
- Escambia County Sheriff (FL): roughly $1 million
- Smith County Sheriff (TX): $340,000+
- Santa Rosa County Sheriff (FL): roughly $280,000
- Fort Walton Beach Police Department (FL): roughly $150,000
- Okaloosa County Sheriff (FL): roughly $100,000
- Franklin County Sheriff (FL): roughly $50,000
- ICE direct to Florida agencies (September 2025): nearly $40 million for vehicles and equipment
Florida law now requires every sheriff who runs a jail to join 287(g). It's no longer optional. Texas began offering its own grants in 2026.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods defended the federal money to NPR: "The federal government has funding for that. So what they're doing is fiscally responsible."[1]
Santa Rosa County Chief Deputy Randy Tifft was blunter about the dependency: "It would be very difficult for us to do what we do without getting reimbursed."[1]
Translation: the program isn't an enforcement supplement. It's becoming the budget line.
The ACLU's Specific Objection
The ACLU's argument isn't that immigration enforcement should be illegal. It's that paying local cops to do federal work, with bounties tied to arrests, is something Congress never authorized when it created 287(g) in 1996.
Naureen Shah, again to NPR: "Congress never intended for ICE to be swooping in to these local jurisdictions and offering them money in exchange to participate."[1]
Congress wrote 287(g) as a voluntary cooperation framework. Local agencies could ask to be deputized. ICE could train and certify officers. Nothing in the statute contemplates ICE writing checks to county budgets, paying officer salaries in full, or attaching per-arrest bonuses.
The ACLU also has a track record on what 287(g) does in practice. The group documented "dragnet" immigration enforcement in jurisdictions with prior 287(g) agreements. The Justice Department itself shut down some 287(g) partnerships in 2012 after finding what looked like racial profiling.[1]
Now the program is back, bigger than ever, with cash incentives the prior version never had.
The Sanctuary Jurisdiction Squeeze
Three states banned 287(g) agreements outright in late 2025 and 2026 (New Mexico, Maine, and Maryland) joining six other states that have prohibited the program for years.[3] New York Governor Kathy Hochul proposed banning ICE collaboration contracts in January 2026.[4] Minnesota lawmakers held hearings in March on a similar bill.[5]
None of this stopped expansion. By early 2026, more than 300 agencies in over 40 states had active 287(g) agreements. By the time NPR's investigation dropped in May, the number had passed 1,700 partnerships covering 13,800 to 15,800 deputized officers.[1][2]
The pressure on sanctuary jurisdictions runs in two directions:
- From below: Counties watch neighboring counties cash $1 million Florida-style checks. Cash-strapped sheriffs face political pressure to opt in
- From above: The Department of Justice has filed a series of lawsuits against cities and states refusing to assist federal immigration officers. DHS publicly called out Virginia Governor Spanberger in February for banning ICE cooperation[6]
Legal scholars argue the 10th Amendment protects states from being forced into federal enforcement schemes, the same anti-commandeering doctrine that lets states refuse to enforce federal marijuana law. State constitutions in many jurisdictions provide additional barriers.[7] But that's a defense in litigation. The money keeps flowing in the meantime.
The Surveillance Hook
The equipment list is where this story connects to the broader ICE buildout we've been tracking. Body armor and Chevy Silverados are old news. The other items aren't:
- Fingerprint scanners: biometric capture in the field, feeding ICE's database
- License plate readers: local cops adding their cruisers to the same Flock and Motorola networks ICE already taps. Every traffic stop becomes a queryable record
- Apple AirPods with Spanish translation: real-time interrogation of non-English speakers without an interpreter, without a witness, without a transcript
None of this gear stays inside immigration enforcement once it's paid for. A fingerprint scanner on a sheriff's belt is a fingerprint scanner at every traffic stop. A Flock camera bolted to a county vehicle scans every plate it passes. Once a department absorbs federal hardware into its routine, the surveillance footprint expands beyond the deputized officers and beyond the immigration mission.
This is how ICE's $28.7 billion 2026 surveillance budget reaches your hometown. Not through a new ICE field office. Through the deputy who pulled you over for a broken taillight last week.
What Performance Bonuses Actually Incentivize
Per-arrest bonus structures aren't unusual in commission-based work. They are unusual in policing. Most departments have spent the last decade trying to eliminate enforcement quotas after lawsuits in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere documented how arrest targets corrupt policing decisions.
The 287(g) bonus structure pays officers more when they find more undocumented people. It does not pay them when they correctly identify someone as a U.S. citizen and let them go. It does not pay them when they investigate a complaint, find no immigration violation, and move on.
The economic incentive runs in one direction: arrest more, find more, get paid more. The civil-liberties consequences of that incentive on Fourth Amendment stops, pretextual traffic enforcement, and racial profiling are exactly what 287(g) critics have flagged for two decades.
Two U.S. citizens were killed in violent ICE operations in Minneapolis earlier this year. Renee Good in January. The pattern of mistaken-identity violence is documented. Performance pay accelerates the underlying targeting pressure.[1]
What You Can Do
Find Out If Your County Signed
ICE publishes the 287(g) participating agency list at ice.gov. Check whether your sheriff is on it. Check whether your county commission voted on it.
Demand Local Transparency
Public records requests work. Ask for the 287(g) memorandum of agreement, the federal funding awards received, and the equipment purchase records. FWD.us flagged the transparency gap because counties aren't volunteering it.
Push Your State Legislature
Nine states now ban or restrict 287(g) agreements. New York, Minnesota, and others have active bills. State law is the most effective ceiling on local participation.
Support Local Defense Funds
Communities with 287(g) deputies need legal observers, know-your-rights training, and bail funds. Local immigration legal-aid organizations are the front line.
The Bottom Line
287(g) used to be a paperwork exercise. A sheriff signed a memorandum and ICE trained a few deputies who could ask about immigration status during jail intake. The funding model was: the county paid for it because the county wanted to.
The 2026 version is something different. ICE pays the salary. ICE pays the overtime. ICE pays for the truck, the gear, and a bonus on top for hitting arrest numbers. A small county sheriff who signs a 287(g) agreement now operates a federally funded immigration enforcement unit inside the county budget, accountable in practice to ICE, paid in part by performance.
Congress didn't authorize this incentive structure. The transparency mechanisms that govern other federal grants aren't being applied. State legislatures that try to pull out face DOJ lawsuits.
The number to remember is $2 billion. That's the FWD.us projection for 2026 alone, bigger than COPS and JAG-Byrne, the two largest existing federal grant streams to local police, combined.[2] Once that money is built into county budgets, unwinding it gets hard. The 287(g) sign-up rate is currently outpacing ICE's own hiring. Local police aren't supplementing federal immigration enforcement anymore. They're absorbing it.
References
- NPR: ICE is paying incentives to local police to help reach Trump's deportation goals (May 5, 2026)
- FWD.us: Analysis: ICE Has Deputized More Than 13,000 Local Officers and Promised Billions Through Expanded 287(g) (Feb 16, 2026)
- ACLU: ICE Is Rapidly Expanding Dangerous 287(g) Agreements with Local Police
- New York Focus: Hochul Proposed Banning ICE Collaboration Contracts (Jan 31, 2026)
- MPR News: State Lawmakers Consider Ban on 287(g) Agreements (March 3, 2026)
- DHS: DHS Calls Out Sanctuary Governor Spanberger (Feb 24, 2026)
- State Court Report: State Constitutions Could Bar Local Police Collaboration with ICE
- Georgia Public Broadcasting: ICE is Giving Local Police Big Money to Help with Immigration Enforcement (May 7, 2026)