Is Your Local Police Department Working With ICE? What 287(g) Really Means

ICE is a federal agency. It does not need permission from a mayor, a city council, or a police department to make arrests anywhere in the United States. What changes from place to place is whether your local police help.

This post is general information, not legal advice. The facts below were checked on September 14, 2026, and these rules are changing quickly.

A lot of people are asking some version of the same question right now: is the police department in my city working with ICE? The honest answer depends on where you live, and it is often less dramatic, and more specific, than what is circulating on social media. To understand it, you need to know about one federal program.

What 287(g) is. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act lets ICE sign written agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies. Under an agreement, ICE trains selected officers and gives them limited authority to carry out certain immigration enforcement tasks under ICE supervision. According to ICE's own list, there are about 2,500 of these agreements nationwide. There are three kinds:

Jail Enforcement Model. Trained officers inside a jail identify people who have been arrested on criminal charges and may be removable, and begin the immigration process.

Warrant Service Officer Model. Trained officers serve ICE administrative warrants on people who are already in the agency's custody, usually in a jail.

Task Force Model. Trained officers can use limited immigration authority during their regular police work in the community. This is the model people usually mean when they worry about immigration questions at a traffic stop.

Two things are worth knowing about every model. First, an agreement allows trained officers to do these things; it does not tell you how often they actually do. Second, none of these agreements is what lets ICE operate in a city. ICE can do that with or without one.

Three places, three different answers.

Doral, Florida: an agreement the state pushed for. The Doral City Council voted in April 2025 to authorize a 287(g) agreement, and ICE's list shows the Doral Police Department signed a Task Force Model agreement on January 7, 2026. Florida has 352 agreements, second only to Texas.

Doral's mayor has said the city did not make this law, and that is largely true. Florida bans sanctuary policies, and a Florida statute requires every sheriff or official who runs a county jail to sign a 287(g) agreement. That statute does not name city police departments. But Florida's Attorney General has warned cities that refusing an agreement can be treated as an illegal sanctuary policy, with the possibility of removal from office. So while no law spells out that Doral must sign, cities in Florida have been under real pressure to do it.

The mayor has also said publicly that no Doral officers have been trained under the agreement yet, that the city does not share residents' information with ICE, and that Doral police are not taking part in the ICE operations residents have been seeing. We have not been able to independently confirm those statements. If they are accurate, the ICE activity in Doral is federal agents acting on their own authority, which they can do regardless of what the city decides. Other agencies in the area, including the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office and the Florida Highway Patrol, have their own Task Force Model agreements.

Washington, D.C.: no agreement, but more cooperation than before. D.C. has no 287(g) agreement, and D.C. law still limits cooperation with ICE. Under D.C. Code section 24-211.07, unless a federal judge has signed a warrant or order, D.C. agencies may not hold someone in jail for ICE past their release time, may not let ICE question people in their custody, and may not give ICE release dates or personal information about people in their custody. In December 2025, the D.C. Council added a line saying the law does not block cooperation that federal law requires, but the core protections are still in place.

What changed is how D.C. police handle people who are not in custody. In August 2025, during the federal takeover of the city's police, the police chief issued an order allowing officers to share information with federal immigration agencies about people who are not in custody, for example during a traffic stop, and to provide transportation for immigration agents and the people they detain. That order is still listed as current on the police department's website. In September 2025, the Mayor also ordered the city to coordinate with federal law enforcement "to the maximum extent allowable by law." That order lists several federal agencies and does not mention ICE or immigration.

The same police order also keeps important limits. D.C. officers may not ask about your immigration status in order to enforce immigration law, and may not arrest someone based only on an ICE warrant or detainer.

Frederick County, Maryland: an agreement that ended. For years, Frederick County had one of the best known 287(g) programs in the region, a Jail Enforcement agreement that began in 2008. It was one of several Maryland counties with agreements in early 2026.

In February 2026, Maryland passed a law that prohibits the state, local governments, and county sheriffs from entering into immigration enforcement agreements, and requires existing agreements to end. Governor Moore signed it on February 17, 2026, and it took effect that day. Frederick's agreement ended, along with the others in Maryland, and ICE's current list shows no Maryland agencies at all. A separate Maryland law, the Community Trust Act, also limits how jails respond to ICE requests; that law is being challenged in federal court, and no ruling has been issued yet.

That does not mean ICE is gone from Frederick County or anywhere else in Maryland. ICE still makes arrests in Maryland on its own. What ended is local officers carrying out immigration tasks for ICE.

What this means for you. Whether or not your local police have an agreement, the most important things stay the same.

Your rights do not change. A 287(g) agreement does not take away your constitutional rights. You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to answer questions about where you were born or your immigration status. Do not lie, and never show false documents.

Know what your local rules actually are. You can search ICE's list of agreements by state to see whether your sheriff or police department has one, and which kind. A rumor that "the police are working with ICE" might mean a street-level Task Force agreement, a jail agreement, or no agreement at all.

Have a plan. Keep your attorney's phone number with you, and make sure your family knows what to do if someone is detained. Our detention help page walks through the first steps.

Be careful who you pay. Fear creates opportunities for people who take advantage of immigrants. Nobody can sell you protection from a 287(g) agreement. We have written about how notario fraud works and how to avoid it.

If you are worried about how these rules could affect you or your family, you can book a consultation below.

Slatton & Hass Immigration Advocates is a Maryland-based immigration firm serving clients nationwide. This post is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.