In early 2025, so as to facilitate its deportation targets, the Trump management entered into masses of agreements with native police departments to really deputize them to behave as federal immigration brokers.
The majority of those agreements have been signed in Republican strongholds equivalent to Texas and Florida, puts the place the immigration insurance policies of state leaders aligned with the ones of the Trump management.
However as Trump ramped up his deportation efforts over the process 2025, how would immigration enforcement play out in sanctuary towns and states?
Sanctuary insurance policies intention to focal point native policing on neighborhood protection fairly than immigration enforcement. In 2016, there have been roughly 340 of those sanctuary jurisdictions within the U.S. By means of the beginning of Trump’s 2d time period, there have been simply over 1,000 of them
Would native police in sanctuary towns and states step in to give protection to somebody they knew hadn’t dedicated a prison or used to be a citizen? Would officials in those puts admonish ICE brokers for failing to persist with right kind protocol?
As an alternative, over the process 2025, movies from sanctuary jurisdictions – together with Chicago, California and Worcester, Massachusetts – confirmed native police performing extra like auxiliary enforcers.
Peter Mancina.
In Peter Mancina’s impending ebook “On the Side of ICE: Policing Immigrants in a Sanctuary State,” he explores the cultural, bureaucratic and political roadblocks to enacting immigrant-friendly policing reforms, with a focal point on New Jersey, the place Mancina works as an accessory regulation professor at Rutgers College.
In an interview, edited for period and readability, Mancina explains why sanctuary insurance policies don’t essentially alternate what occurs at the flooring.
The adoption of sanctuary insurance policies grew dramatically all the way through the primary Trump management. But at quite a lot of issues within the ebook, you name them a “rebrand,” a “public relations facade” and “immigration enforcement assistance with an immigrant friendly face.” What’s in the back of the ones characterizations?
There’s an interior pressure to sanctuary insurance policies. There’s this broader sanctuary motion that’s been round since kind of 1980, which happened in large part in accordance with U.S. involvement in Central American civil wars and protective immigrants fleeing those and different conflicts.
The activists set to work with town officers sympathetic to their reason in towns equivalent to San Francisco to create resolutions protective immigrants that have been in large part symbolic. After the San Francisco Police Division used to be discovered to be ignoring the solution, town created the rustic’s first sanctuary ordinance in 1989. With this ordinance, activists was hoping that native police might be averted from participating with federal immigration officials.
However many activists assumed that the type of ethics and the values that existed within the sanctuary motion may just if truth be told be taken up in coverage and carried out, as a result of there’s this perception that while you cross a regulation or ordinance it is going to be carried out as written.
A big a part of the ebook is to mention, “Actually, that’s not how policy works.” It suits inside those bureaucratic cultures. And in policing tradition, there’s already this internet of relationships that native police officers have with federal brokers, and those cultures have their very own worth methods. One thing that individuals don’t truly speak about is that native police aren’t simply utilized by ICE as those native enforcers of immigration regulation. If truth be told, a large number of instances native regulation enforcement glance to ICE as companions and collaborators.
The place does the breakdown occur between coverage and apply?
Those present insurance policies in large part recognize the truth that the vast majority of the undocumented folks that native regulation enforcement come upon don’t have prison backgrounds. They are saying that what we need to goal are those truly horrible people who find themselves the violent criminals.
Those criminals are framed because the exception to the rule of thumb. However those exceptions nonetheless finally end up resulting in slightly a couple of other folks being transferred by means of native police and jails to ICE. And the exceptions can simply be exploited or broadened by means of the boots at the flooring – the police tasked with following the coverage – as a result of there’s regularly this grey space within the language.
So what finally ends up going down is that there truly isn’t any kind of primary lower in deportations in sanctuary jurisdictions. In 2018, New Jersey Lawyer Common Gurbir Grewal issued his Immigrant Agree with Directive, which barred native regulation enforcement from serving to federal government perform civil-immigration enforcement. The final yr earlier than it used to be carried out, native police grew to become 1,000 other folks being held in native jails over to ICE. After it went into impact, that quantity went down rather the next yr, to 700 other folks. That’s nonetheless a large number of undocumented other folks being grew to become over. And it’s as a result of native police have been in a position to use the ones “exceptional circumstances” in a lot of the ones circumstances.
In Trump 2.0, kind of two-thirds of immigrants within the custody of ICE haven’t any prison background. All over the Biden management, 42% of them had no prison background.
Within the ebook, you relay this one example in New Jersey the place ICE calls within the native police as backup, and the native police – acutely aware of the state’s new Immigrant Agree with Directive – describe their function at the scene to native activists and passersby as “protecting public safety.” But you indicate that they if truth be told are serving to ICE, as a result of their vehicles are parked to dam the road so the focused immigrant can’t power away.
You’ll have a coverage, like the person who the Los Angeles Town Council handed in 2024, which used to be principally written as a “no cooperation policy.” And nonetheless, it’s now not imaginable to if truth be told pull off in apply, since you then have the ones circumstances like the only you simply discussed, the place although you ban “immigration enforcement practices” like making immigration-related arrests, fundamental public protection policing goes to nonetheless occur, whether or not that’s crowd regulate or visitors regulate.
So when native police display up at an immigration house arrest or a worksite raid, they regularly grow to be a part of immigration enforcement by means of distinctive feature of the truth that they’re there to give protection to pedestrians, path visitors, reply to violence or give protection to ICE brokers.
You’ll see this on social media, when protests abruptly shape to enclose ICE officials all the way through raids. Police step in to help ICE by means of protective them as they haul somebody away. This turns emergency help and crowd regulate right into a type of immigration enforcement itself.
NYPD officials reply as protestors block a storage utilized by ICE trucks forward of a purported ICE raid on New York Town’s Canal Boulevard on Nov. 29, 2025.
Stephanie Keith/Getty Photographs
In the long run, while you get down into the procedural point of the way you put in force these things, it’s if truth be told now not imaginable to keep away from cooperating. Entire non-cooperation and whole coverage merely don’t occur.
I’ve additionally observed native regulation enforcement companies in sanctuary jurisdictions merely publish all in their inmate data on-line. ICE brokers can automatically take a look at the ones databases and display as much as arrest them as soon as the inmates are launched.
Below the George W. Bush management, there used to be the Protected Neighborhood program, by which the Division of Fatherland Safety required native police to test the immigration standing of any person that they fingerprint. The Obama management if truth be told expanded this program. How have techniques like this facilitated what you describe as a “professional kinship” between native police and federal brokers?
The best way I see it, native police and federal companies have other missions and other targets, however they see themselves as having the ability to lend a hand every different accomplish their quite a lot of targets.
Many native police departments have lengthy observed deportations as simply some other software that they may be able to use to get criminals off the road for excellent. When they’ve arrested an undocumented particular person, they think that in the event that they’re deported, there gained’t be a possibility for them to go back to the neighborhood to dedicate extra crimes. And this view has been ingrained and strengthened thru those collaborative partnerships just like the Protected Communities program.
Apparently, all the way through the peak of the Protected Communities program, (felony students) Adam Cox and Thomas Miles carried out a statistical research of three,000 counties from 2005 to 2013 that assisted ICE by means of turning other folks over to them from native jails.
They discovered, around the board, that crime in those counties didn’t lower. It sounds counterintuitive. But if most of the people deported thru prison transfers are other folks with low-level prison bookings – and now not severe convictions – it makes extra sense. It additionally doesn’t forestall people who find themselves a part of a prison endeavor from understanding a approach to get again into the rustic after being deported.
I need to return to that time period “sanctuary.” Warring parties of sanctuary insurance policies appear to have used it as a cudgel, and I believe that’s for the reason that layperson understands “sanctuary” as overall coverage. You clearly display that to not be the case. Have you ever observed elected officers warding off the time period?
Round 2011 or 2012, officers began strolling again the best way they framed sanctuary insurance policies. They have been obviously sanctuary insurance policies with regards to how they’d been crafted and what they try to do. However puts like Chicago, for instance, referred to as theirs a “Welcoming City” ordinance.
And, yeah, politicians are working clear of the time period: I’ve heard other ones say, , “This is not a sanctuary policy,” although it’s been crafted the usage of nearly the very same language as insurance policies which can be explicitly described as sanctuary insurance policies.
As I famous previous, there used to be a time when activists and lawmakers concept those insurance policies truly have been going to forestall native jails and native police from serving to to deport other folks. They only didn’t watch for the sturdiness of local-federal partnerships and their tenacity to find tactics to avoid the intentions of lawmakers.
I believe over the years – because the spirit of those insurance policies is still violated by means of many native regulation enforcement officials – the time period “sanctuary” has been utilized in extra of an aspirational sense.
Do native officials ever get disciplined for violating sanctuary coverage?
I if truth be told studied this – become independent from the ebook – in San Francisco, the place the police leader had issued a sanctuary town order.
If an officer violates a neighborhood division order, it could pass of their police report. Those write-ups can upload up and may end up in a real firing beneath police union laws.
In each and every unmarried case the place there used to be a contravention of the sanctuary laws, the one factor that used to be issued used to be a verbal admonishment. So no write-ups. It’s the identical of somebody announcing, “Don’t do that again,” and leaving it at that.
They knew their superiors have been conscious. So it used to be now not not anything. In positive cases, those that had violated the order have been instructed to return to the San Francisco Police Academy for coaching at the sanctuary ordinance.
However none of it went into their information. You should say it used to be an overly lenient tradition round the ones laws.
Returning to New Jersey: Was once there any follow-up on whether or not native police departments have been adhering to the Immigrant Agree with Directive?
So when the accept as true with directive used to be carried out, the New Jersey lawyer common’s place of job created coaching for all regulation enforcement officials. It used to be an internet video that they needed to watch. It used to be a couple of hours lengthy. It used to be very technical. I watched it. Regardless that some officials have been allowed to do different paintings whilst staring at, all of them needed to do it, and there used to be an overly company accounting of making sure that each and every officer were given that coaching.
I additionally know that within the first yr, they required native companies to record again any cases of cooperation with federal immigration government. However after that first yr, the follow-up turns out to have stopped altogether. There have been no additional documented experiences.
I additionally controlled a crew of researchers that did a public information request of over 400 companies around the state. I sought after to peer whether or not native police departments had modified their insurance policies to incorporate the dictates of the Immigration Agree with Directive.
I used to be in a position to get get right of entry to to information from 68% of all regulation enforcement companies within the state. Of the ones, simplest 55% had if truth be told modified their procedures so that they have been compliant with the Immigrant Agree with Directive. Be mindful, there have been nonetheless pro-immigration enforcement procedures that have been already at the books from Anne Milgram’s tenure (New Jersey’s lawyer common from 2007 to 2010), when officials have been inspired to inquire about immigration standing. It seems many departments didn’t even tweak those interior insurance policies and procedures.
What has stood out to you in regards to the deportation efforts of the second one Trump management?
What’s going down are extensions of what’s been going down over the last few a long time, with regards to the government having a look to spouse with other companies on the native, state and federal ranges, whether or not it’s sheriff’s departments, the ATF, the FBI or the Secret Provider.
However none of this coordination has ever came about to the stage we’re seeing presently. The management is assigning other folks inside those quite a lot of companies to do full-time immigration enforcement.
What’s been truly superb to me, too, has been the amplification of the 287(g) program. Those are agreements signed with the Division of Fatherland Safety that allows native cops to move out and in finding undocumented other folks to arrest and be probably deported throughout their on a regular basis policing actions. So it permits them to double as a federal officer.
At the beginning of 2025, 135 native regulation enforcement companies all through the U.S. had signed those agreements.
Now over 1,000 companies have signed on. Each and every unmarried sheriff’s place of job in Florida is recently beneath a 287(g) settlement.
Over the process your 15 years finding out sanctuary policing – both for this ebook or to your different research – did you ever come upon cases the place native police arrived on the scene of an ICE raid or an arrest and took the facet of undocumented immigrants or voters for one explanation why or some other, whether or not that supposed admonishing ICE brokers for his or her aggressiveness or telling them, “Hey, you’re not following proper protocol.”
No, now not a unmarried time.
