President Trump and his team are looking to state and local law enforcement to help them arrest and deport foreigners who are in the country without authorization. Many of the nation’s sheriffs have responded with enthusiasm.
They are thrilled to work with the Trump administration, they said, and to once again “have a seat at the table” after four years of what they have described as being ignored by the Biden administration.
But the sheriffs say they need something in return: money, and lots of it, to cover the cost of what it will take to refocus scant local resources on what is inherently a federal responsibility.
“The federal government will have to dedicate substantial resources in order to help cover this, and that’s no secret. They know that,” said Jim Skinner, the sheriff in Collin County, Texas.
Where the money would come from is not yet clear. And the sheriffs’ role would be part of a larger federal effort to crack down on immigration violations, all of which will require a significant infusion of new federal funding at a time when there is a commitment to vast cost-cutting across the federal government. Mr. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has said mass deportations will cost around $86 billion.
While the Trump administration is looking to all state and local law enforcement for help on combating illegal immigration, the country’s sheriffs are a logical place to start. As elected officials, they operate with more autonomy than police chiefs, and they control thousands of jails.
Sheriffs’ offices are typically funded through county governments and operate on fairly lean budgets, though that varies from one office to another, depending on the local tax base. For many of them, taking on extra duties is difficult even in good times.
This means sheriffs who want to cooperate with the federal government often say they do not have the manpower to spare. Others are limited by state and local laws restricting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
In Jackson County, Michigan, which has a population of nearly 160,000, the sheriff’s office lost funding for six deputy positions in the last budget cycle. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs support from that office, which it has yet to request, it would most likely require paying a deputy overtime, the sheriff, Gary R. Schuette, said.
“We just started a new budget year Jan. 1, so I have overtime in the budget that would allow me to provide support on a limited basis,” Sheriff Schuette said in an email. “If it became a regular occurrence, I would have to re-evaluate our ability to do so.”
Currently, there are no federal funding streams dedicated to compensating local law enforcement for this type of work. A federal grant earmarked for reimbursing local jails for holding undocumented immigrants has not covered all the costs, sheriffs’ associations say. Mr. Trump tried to eliminate the grant program in his last administration, and it is not clear whether he would move to do the same now.
Trump administration officials have yet to articulate what specifically they need from sheriffs beyond basic cooperation, including providing Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to their jails, details about undocumented inmates and temporary holding space. But when the agency asks for a detainee to be held longer than required, costs can be incurred, depending on the jurisdiction and how much assistance ICE needs.
Garry McFadden, the sheriff of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, said he was already struggling with the additional costs in just about two months of cooperating with ICE on undocumented immigrants in his jails. The county has a population of about 1.1 million.
He said in an interview that it costs his office $360 to hold a detainee at the request of ICE for 48 hours beyond the person’s release date.
Between Dec. 1 and Feb. 10, Sheriff McFadden said, ICE asked that 83 undocumented immigrants in the county’s custody be held another two days beyond their release dates. That is roughly an additional $30,000, Sheriff McFadden said.
And ICE, he said, never picked up any of the inmates it had asked the jail to hold. An spokesperson for the agency did not respond to a request for comment.
Sheriff McFadden’s office’s cooperation with ICE is mandated by a new state law, which does not stipulate how additional costs will be covered.
“We all should cooperate with ICE,” Sheriff McFadden said. “But it costs us money.”
When it comes to immigration policy, sheriffs have long been outspoken in favor of more federal enforcement and stronger border security. Drugs and gang violence top the public safety concerns in many of their jurisdictions.
“I think that the majority of people, if not all people, would agree that if somebody is in this country illegally, and they’re wreaking havoc by committing crime — burglaries, robberies, rapes —” said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County, Florida, “they need to go.”
Many sheriffs have been particularly frustrated over the past four years, when at times, record numbers of immigrants were crossing the southern border without permission. When sheriffs’ associations tried to meet with the Biden White House to discuss the challenges, they said they felt ignored.
This was in stark contrast to the relationships they had with the first Trump White House.
“We literally had a seat at the table,” Sheriff Kieran Donahue, of Canyon County, Idaho, said. He recalled attending a meeting with other sheriffs and Vice President Mike Pence at the White House in 2018, and that Mr. Trump had surprised them by dropping in.
A spokesman for the Biden White House did not respond directly to a question about the level of interaction. Some sheriffs received an invitation to meet with the head of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House in the spring of last year, but it felt perfunctory, said Jonathan Thompson, the executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association.
Once Mr. Trump won a second term, his team resumed conversations with the sheriffs, asking them what they needed from the federal government in general and seeking advice on tackling immigration enforcement.
“They’re asking, not telling, which is frankly a very refreshing thing,” Mr. Thompson said.
That courtship is starting to pay off again.
ICE is looking to expand its detention space. Sheriffs who can spare the beds are raising their hands.
“This is a public safety issue,” said Jeff Gahler, the sheriff of Harford County, Maryland, which lies outside Baltimore and has a population of about 260,000.
In 2022 and 2023, there were two brutal murders in the county in which local women were killed by people who were in the country without authorization.
Even as analysts say the number of undocumented immigrants who commit crimes is relatively low, tragedies like the murders in Harford County revive debates about stricter immigration enforcement.
“For me, it’s never been about the money,” Sheriff Gahler said.
His office has partnered with ICE on a daily basis for about a decade. Several times a week, an immigration officer is stationed in the county detention center. He said the cost of assisting ICE was negligible. But on average, ICE does not regularly ask his office to hold inmates beyond their release dates. ICE may make one request a week, if that, he said.
But for sheriffs who see requests more often, the burden can be substantial, and not just financially.
For Sheriff Donahue, it is simply not feasible. Certain types of cooperation with ICE require his officers to undergo weekslong in-person training — a direct impact on the time and manpower at his agency, he said.
“And quite frankly, I have enough to do in terms of my own criminality here. My people are humping it every day,” he said. “At the end of the day, I do not enforce immigration law.”
Sheriff Donahue said that his agency helps ICE by notifying it when someone comes into his jail and says that they are in the country without authorization.
He said there is a standard, two-sentence email sent to ICE with this information.
“And that’s it. Now it’s up to ICE,” Sheriff Donahue said.
The post Trump Wants Sheriffs to Aid Deportation Efforts, but Who Would Pay? appeared first on New York Times.
