Sheriff’s deputies in a western Idaho county will soon be able to stop and interrogate any person they believe to be in the country without authorization.

In February, Owyhee County Sheriff Larry Kendrick signed his county up for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that was discontinued in 2012 following multiple instances of racial profiling from participating law enforcement agencies. After taking office earlier this year, President Donald Trump reinstated the program, which President Barack Obama had halted.

Under the program, called the 287(g) task force model, local police officers are trained to work as ICE agents, acting as a “force multiplier” for ICE, according to its website. Designated officers will be able to stop and question people they believe to be in the country illegally and process them for federal immigration violations if they are also arrested on state charges.

Trump has encouraged widespread participation from law enforcement agencies across the country to help enforce his mass deportation efforts. Idaho Gov. Brad Little also issued an executive order in February that asked local law enforcement agencies to consider entering into the 287(g) programs with ICE.

The Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office is the first agency in Idaho to have this kind of task force agreement with ICE. It went into effect Feb. 19, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by InvestigateWest. But Kendrick said his officers have not gone through training or begun participating yet in the program. Owyhee County has just 12 full-time and two part-time deputies. Kendrick said a sergeant and two deputies will likely make up the task force.

Under the program, ICE pays for any new technology needed, but all other expenses will be paid by the sheriff’s office. That includes salaries, benefits, overtime and local transportation. Previous law enforcement agencies have ended agreements due to the added costs.

The 287(g) program refers to Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act passed by Congress in 1996. The section authorizes ICE to tap state and local law enforcement officers for some components of immigration enforcement.

Kendrick said the county’s participation in the federal program is mostly meant to acknowledge support for Trump in Owyhee County.

“My constituents are all very conservative, and I’m conservative,” he said. “I support Trump. I support his policies. So I joined to get on board with this simply because that is what my constituents expect. That’s just supporting the Trump administration, which I do very, very much.”

But the program’s history of abuses concerns many immigration attorneys and advocates.

“I think it is going to reduce trust in the police, reduce the reporting of crimes,” said Nikki Ramirez-Smith, a partner and immigration attorney at Ramirez-Smith Law in Nampa, Idaho.

“Nobody’s going to want to talk. Because if you witness a crime where normally you would come forward and testify, are you really going to go talk to ICE? That’s like being sent into the ICE building. I think the police need some distance from ICE if they want to do police work, which is their job, is to work with victims and perpetrators.”

Racial profiling concerns

Kendrick said the agreement doesn’t mean deputies will target people for immigration enforcement who aren’t already under investigation for criminal activity. He said it will allow officers to add immigration charges to people who are arrested for drug trafficking.

“The purpose isn’t to go out and look for illegals,” Kendrick said, referring to people who are in the country without authorization. “Here’s the thing, we have three dairies in our county, and the dairies were here even before me, and, yeah, there’s probably some illegals working there, but we’re not after them. We’re after the bad guys.”

Attorneys like Smith-Ramirez worry agreements like this alone damage the department’s relationship with the community.

“The current political climate of fear has led, already, to a level of distrust of law enforcement,” Smith-Ramirez said. “The police departments rely on relationships to get people to talk, to get people to report crimes, to get people to trust them. And doing something like this is counterproductive.”

A study from Texas A&M University found that law enforcement agencies who had not signed 287(g) task force agreements — but were geographically close to another agency — were likely to engage in the same racial profiling that the participating agencies engaged in. The study found the state highway patrol in North Carolina and South Carolina were more likely to stop Latino drivers than white drivers.

Research like that concerns Smith-Ramirez who said Owyhee County has a significant number of Latino farmworkers who she worries could be caught up in the system.

“Owyhee County has a huge farming population, which means you’ve got a lot of immigrant workers who are terrified to go to work,” she said. “They’re scared to leave the house. Their kids are scared for their parents to go outside or do anything. I think it’s only going to get worse once they start doing this.”

In 2011, a federal government investigation found that under the task force model, deputies in Arizona’s Maricopa County racially profiled Latino residents for immigration enforcement and conducted unlawful searches, detentions and arrests of Latinos. A year later, federal authorities found that deputies in North Carolina’s Alamance County, who also operated as task force agents under the 287(g) agreement, were unfairly arresting Latinos and had set up checkpoints in Latino neighborhoods and pulled over Latino drivers for traffic violations 10 times more often than non-Latino drivers. Both agencies had the 287(g) agreements revoked.

“If this is happening, I would be hesitant to report a crime myself,” said Neal Dougherty, partner and immigration attorney at Smith-Ramirez Law. “I would be hesitant to advise my clients to report crimes to the Owyhee sheriff if I thought they were operating as ICE.”

Other counties cooperate with ICE

While Owyhee is the only Idaho county with an agreement to be trained as ICE agents, a different kind of agreement under the 287(g) program can allow local jurisdictions to hold ICE detainees in jails and to serve immigration-related warrants.

Both kinds of agreements under the 287(g) program have grown dramatically under Trump. According to reporting from the Markup, 133 law enforcement agencies in 21 states had a form of the 287(g) agreement before the election. Earlier this month, 300 agencies in 38 states had them.

In Idaho, three counties have the 287(g) agreements to hold ICE detainees or serve immigration warrants: Owyhee County, Power County and Gooding County. The Gooding and Power agreements have been in place since 2020. It is unclear if any other counties in Idaho will join the 287(g) program.

Even without formal agreements, some sheriffs in Idaho have defined their own process for immigration enforcement. In Kootenai County, as InvestigateWest previously reported, deputies shared the immigration statuses of people who they encountered who were not being investigated for any state crimes.

Idaho State Police Lt. Col. Fritz Zweigart said during a media briefing that the state police have been looking into the task force model, but “right now, we’re working so well with our federal partners that we don’t necessarily need to sign into a written agreement.”

Immigration enforcement is the sole duty of the federal government, according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and local police may assist under federal direction. Without a 287(g) agreement, it is illegal for local police to serve federal immigration warrants and to investigate people’s immigration statuses.

Gov. Little has encouraged more coordination with ICE under 287(g).

“To the fullest extent of the law, all State agencies with law enforcement … authority must consider formal procedures and agreements to assist the federal government in the enforcement of immigration law, including agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act,” his executive order said.

InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. A Report for America corps member, reporter Rachel Spacek can be reached at [email protected].

This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/27/ice-agreement-287g-idaho-owyhee/