ICE expands immigration capacity with more than 29,000 state and local officers
An FWD.us report says twice as many personnel are authorized as eight months earlier. Federal incentives and additional Florida funding support the 287(g) program's expansion.
According to an FWD.us report, ICE granted immigration-enforcement authority to more than 29,000 state and local police officers between January 2025 and October 2026. The total is double the figure from eight months earlier and exceeds the 11,600 officers the federal agency directly employs for deportation work. FWD.us is a U.S. nonprofit organization focused primarily on immigration and criminal-justice reform.
The personnel expansion operates through the 287(g) program, which allows immigration arrest powers to be delegated to police and sheriff's offices. More than 1,850 agencies across 30 states participate in the version with the broadest operational scope. Participating jurisdictions cover areas where at least one-third of the U.S. population lives. In Florida, state law requires sheriffs in all 67 counties to enter such agreements.
The expansion also includes financial incentives. During the summer, the Justice Department offered $3 billion in grants for agencies joining the program. Florida separately administers up to $250 million to reimburse participating agencies. By the end of June, approvals from that state fund totaled about $148 million, through a mechanism separate from federal financing.
Felicity Rose, vice president of research at FWD.us, connects the growth to a tactical shift by the Trump administration. In her view, police collaboration allows the focus to move from large urban operations to less visible interventions during routine traffic stops. Rose contrasts that model with high-profile deployments in cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis and considers local officers essential to the strategy.
The Department of Homeland Security says the agreements are fundamental to fighting both crime and unauthorized immigration. Regarding the people detained by ICE, Cato Institute analyses place the share with convictions for violent crimes at between 5% and 7% of those arrested by the federal immigration agency in the data examined by the public-policy organization.
For the Cuban community, the increase in immigration enforcement has a quantified precedent from the Cato Institute: ICE arrests of Cuban citizens rose 463% from late 2024 through the first months of 2026. In South Florida, people holding Form I-220A, with a pending case or with expired parole are among the groups particularly exposed to enforcement under these agreements.