![The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building can be seen Jan. 21, 2025, in downtown Chicago.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 900 506"/%3E "The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building can be seen Jan. 21, 2025, in downtown Chicago.")
TALLAHASSEE — As the Trump administration pushes for more deportations, Florida sheriffs and police chiefs across the state are signing up to participate in a federal immigration program that empowers local officers to stop and interrogate people about their immigration status in the course of routine police work.
The program — known as the 287(g) task force model — is described as a “force multiplier” for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So far, more than 100 law enforcement agencies in Florida are ready to participate. But the task force model’s history has sparked debates over racial profiling and community trust.
Here is what you need to know about the program:
What is the task force model?
The task force model is one of three frameworks under the 287(g) program, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to partner up with local and state law enforcement agencies to do more immigration enforcement.
The main difference is that the task force model allows officers to challenge people on the street about their immigration status — and possibly arrest them — while the other two models are focused on investigating people who have already been arrested and booked in local jails. Those are known as the jail enforcement model, where arrested people without proper status can be identified and processed for immigration purposes, and the warrant service officer program, which allows local officers to serve and execute ICE warrants on people already in jail. All county jails in Florida are now participating in the 287(g) program.
Under the task force model, which local law enforcement agencies can opt into, state and local officers are trained and deputized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement so they can question, detain and arrest individuals they suspect of violating civil immigration laws while officers are out policing the communities they are sworn to protect.
In 2012, the model was abandoned by the Obama administration after racial profiling issues were discovered and legal challenges emerged. President Donald Trump did not revive the task force model during his first term, but his administration relaunched it last month, and the Florida Highway Patrol was the first law enforcement agency in the country to enroll.
What about police officers’ new roles?
Once trained and deputized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police officers will hit the ground with the added role of immigration enforcer.
In addition to doing their routine work, they will be allowed to stop and question people about their immigration status, ask for their papers and — if there is reasonable suspicion that an individual is in the country without proper immigration status — they could arrest them.
While officers have the power to arrest, they will still need to meet the criteria set by ICE before they detain anyone. That criteria includes those who are deemed a public safety threat, a national security threat, those who have an outstanding warrant for their arrest or those who were deported but reentered the country illegally.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who is an adviser to Florida’s State Immigration Enforcement Council, said officers will be focused on arresting those who meet the ICE criteria for detention. Gualtieri and other sheriffs, including Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz, have said their deputies will be focused on people who are committing crimes.
If a person is pulled over for a traffic stop in Miami-Dade, they will still only be asked for their license, insurance and registration — not proof of residency status, Cordero-Stutz told the public last month. If that stop leads to an investigation of more serious crimes or an arrest, then that may change, she said.
What about timing and training?
Before officers hit the ground, they need to be nominated by their law enforcement agencies and then trained, certified and authorized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to perform the limited functions of federal immigration agents.
For now, Florida police agencies have to wait on the federal government. Local agencies don’t have the forms to nominate officers and deputies, much less the documents that are needed to train and certify them.
When the process gets going, the officers will undergo mandatory training. Records show that the training can be done “in-person and online, recorded or virtual-meeting formats, as determined by ICE.” It is unclear whether all Florida law enforcement agencies will conduct a uniform type of training, but Gualtieri, the Pinellas County sheriff, said the training is expected to be a 40-hour online mandatory training.
Records show the training includes lessons on “relevant immigration law,” the scope of immigration officers’ authorities, as well as instruction on civil rights laws, liability issues and “cross-cultural issues.”
In short, it will take time to train and certify officers in more than 100 participating Florida agencies. Or as Gualtieri put it: “It is not going to be all of a sudden, poof, you’ve got all these people out there. It’s not going to work that way.”
What about the program’s history?
Legal scholars who have studied the task force model over the years have raised concerns about the impact the program’s execution can have in community policing.
Studies and a federal investigation have shown findings of racial profiling, particularly in Latino communities, in some jurisdictions where the program was active in the 2000s. A 2011 report from the Migration Policy Institute found that in some jurisdictions, participation in the task force model resulted in stops and arrests that disproportionately targeted Latinos.
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona and found a “pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos.”
That same year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement discontinued the task force model, saying in a memo that other enforcement programs were a “more efficient use of resources for focusing on priority cases.”
Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University, said the risk of racial profiling can increase depending on how diverse a community is and how officers choose to enforce immigration violations.
“If you are a police officer, even if you have no racial prejudices, you know that a person who looks like they’re Hispanic or Black or who’s speaking Spanish is statistically speaking more likely to be an undocumented immigrant,” Somin said. “Therefore, it’s very difficult to resist the temptation to engage in this kind of profile.”
