Click the listen button above to hear a conversation between WESA’s Susan Scott Peterson and politics editor Chris Potter.
In recent weeks, WESA has reported several stories about high-profile immigration arrests in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Springdale, Oakmont, and elsewhere.
The arrests have sparked fights among local officials over the relationship between local police and federal immigration enforcement. In some cases, officials have sought closer ties with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers; elsewhere, officials have taken pains to distance themselves.
What should you know about that debate if it comes to your neighborhood?
1) Federal authorities are looking for local partners.
ICE is actively encouraging local law enforcement to join what are known as 287(g) agreements. The agreements allow federal government to partner with state and local law enforcement agencies to perform some immigration-related functions, in addition to their typical duties.
The agreements can take different forms: Partnerships with jails can involve the transfer of inmates to federal custody, while a “task force” approach involves giving police some immigration-enforcement powers while doing routine patrol work.
While the program has existed since the 1990s, its use has skyrocketed during the second Trump administration as federal officials have ramped up immigration enforcement efforts. ICE now boasts nearly 1,500 such partnerships across the country, including almost 70 in Pennsylvania.
2) Not everyone is anxious to join up.
Locally, the list of 287(g) partners includes the sheriff’s department in Beaver, Butler, and Westmoreland counties. It also includes constable’s offices across the state, and communities that include, perhaps most notably, Springdale borough.
In Springdale, officials have said Springdale police pulled over Randy Cordova Flores, an immigrant from Peru, during a traffic stop last month. His detention appears to mark the first public case in Allegheny County where police acted under a 287(g) agreement.
But that move has sparked controversy, and just down the river, Oakmont disavowed any intention of working with federal authorities after one of its residents, Jose Flores, was taken into custody in front of his family. Flores, whose case drew considerable attention from federal lawmakers was later released — an unusual outcome.
Officials in McCandless have also said they won’t allow their police to participate in civil immigration enforcement. And Allegheny County Council is weighing a similar proposal that would prohibit a broad swath of county workers and officials from helping ICE without a court order.
Other local communities have also pulled out of 287(g) agreements in recent months.
3) Critics warn the partnerships can be a double-edged sword.
ICE urges municipalities to work with it in order to “keep your community safe from potentially dangerous criminal aliens.” It offers the necessary training and, potentially, access to other federal resources as well.
Critics say that tasking local police can be a distraction, or worse, from their existing duties. There may be liability concerns, like a major civil rights lawsuit that found an Arizona agency was racially profiling in its traffic stops. And they say participating in a 287(g) may make a local police department less trusted, making people less likely to report crimes.
4) How to get into — or out of — these agreements isn’t always clear.
In some cases, including that of Springdale, the 287(g) agreement was undertaken by the top law-enforcement official, be that a sheriff or a chief of police. But lawsuits have challenged the legality of that arrangement, noting that the state Constitution requires either an act of the governing body or a citizens’ referendum to “cooperate or agree in the exercise of any function” with another government agency.
But it can be difficult to challenge an agreement on that basis. The ACLU of Pennsylvania challenged the Bucks County sheriff on the matter, but lost — an outcome hailed by supporters of President Trump’s immigration policies. (The sheriff later lost his re-election bid to a rival who reversed the policy.) Public pressure may not always work … and municipal elections took place just last fall.