It is my understanding that there are NO Sheriff Departments in this country that must make an alliance with ICE through 287(g) programs. Now, that does not mean that ICE cannot bribe the police into doing it, OR if a state, such as Texas, passed a law that requires the law to have an agreement, the law can avoid it. Gov Abbott, in Texas, who is a trash bigot, signed a bill back on June 23, 2025 mandating that most Texas Sheriff Departments must participate. The fact, incidentally,on the ICE website entitled “How Can I convince my chief or secretary to participate in 287g is there shows that Abbott is strong-arming this program. In fact, the law regarding this threatens the participants that if they don’t obey the law, they can be sued. . There are, however, states in which (for example, Maryland) laws are passed to prevent this cooperation. Incidentally, it used to be that local police departments expressly did not get involved in federal deportations. Here is an article from Tom Green County (Texas) about the Warrant Service Officer (which is also what Somervell County has )
Under Texas law, sheriffs who operate county jails are required to enter into a cooperative agreement with ICE. To comply with that mandate, the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office selected the most limited option available — the Warrant Service Officer, or WSO, model.
Hanna told commissioners the decision was driven by both cost and scope.
The WSO model is the “least financially burdensome on our county” and requires “minimal training” while still meeting state requirements, Hanna said during the meeting.
“Our action is law enforcement. Our action has not ever been serving immigration,” Hanna said. “We do back those folks up. We’re happy to protect them, but that is not our main mission.”
Hanna emphasized that the agreement is required by state law and does not represent an expansion of the sheriff’s office into broader immigration enforcement.
Under the WSO model, trained jail personnel are authorized only to serve ICE administrative warrants on individuals who are already lawfully in custody at the Tom Green County Jail. The agreement does not allow immigration enforcement activities outside the jail and does not involve patrols, investigations, or community-based operations.
“The Legislature’s intent was not to expand local law enforcement into immigration policing,” Hanna said. “It was to ensure that when someone is already lawfully in a county jail, there is a consistent, lawful and federally supervised process for serving immigration warrants.”
Hanna added that the Warrant Service Officer model was designed to be the narrowest form of participation under the 287(g) program while still supporting federal immigration laws as part of overall public safety.
MD Governor Moore just signed an emergency measure that invalidates all 287g agreements, intergovernmental service agreements, and memoranda of understandings between state/local and federal gov't agencies for the purpose of immigration law enforcement, & bans new ones. Effective immediately 🦀
— Alex Goyette (@alexgoyette.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 2:29 PM
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Texas Tribune: (article written before Abbott signed into law)
Senate Bill 8, filed by Republican state Sens. Joan Huffman of Houston and Charles Schwertner of Georgetown, would require sheriffs in counties with more than 100,000 residents to request a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The bill would also create a $20 million fund to give grants to sheriff’s offices in counties with fewer than 1 million residents that enter into agreements with ICE. The grants would help cover costs a county would incur as part of a 287(g) agreement, such as detaining a person in jail for potential immigration violations.
The bill, which passed on a 20-11 vote, also allows the state Attorney General’s Office to sue a sheriff if the state believes that a sheriff is not complying with the law….
The 287(g) program allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train selected law enforcement officers and deputize them to help enforce immigration laws. The federal program has two main models historically used by participating law enforcement agencies.
The jail enforcement model allows selected and ICE-trained local officers to question inmates in local jails about their immigration status and hold them for ICE if the deputy suspects the person is in the country illegally. The second model is known as a warrant service officer, which allows ICE-trained police officers to serve administrative immigration warrants.
Generally, if ICE takes a suspected undocumented immigrant into custody, local prosecutors would have to drop any charges against the person so ICE can start deportation proceedings. Or ICE can wait to pick up the person after their local criminal case has been adjudicated.
The problem with administrative warrants is that the level of proof is different. This next is speaking about one’s home or other private area
For civil immigration matters—such as being in the United States without authorization or lawful status—ICE typically uses administrative warrants. Administrative warrants have not been signed off by a judge. For this reason, they don’t permit ICE agents to arrest a person in their home or another private place without consent to enter.To arrest someone in their home, ICE needs an actual judicial warrant, signed by a judge, showing probable cause of a crime. This crime can be an immigration-related crime (for example, forging documents, illegal entry to the United States, or smuggling people) or any crime (like assault, theft, and drug crimes).
An administrative warrant is signed by an ICE officer or another authorized immigration official—not a district court judge. It will typically list:
- the person’s name
- the name or seal of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or another federal agency
- a title such as “Warrant for Arrest of Alien,” and
- the signature of an authorized officer or immigration judge (who’s different from a judge in federal or state court).
These ICE warrants allow arrests in public spaces, such as hospital waiting rooms, courthouses, schools, and workplace parking lots. They don’t let ICE enter homes or private areas (like a hospital room) without permission (consent) or a judicial warrant.
If an agent knocks on your door with only an administrative warrant, you don’t have to open it. Even cracking it open can count as giving consent. You can keep the door shut and ask the agent to slide the warrant under the door or hold it to a window for you to read through the glass. If it’s an administrative warrant, you can ask them to leave.
Businesses face similar rules. They’re not required to let ICE in just because ICE shows an administrative warrant. If they do let them in, though, ICE agents can ask employees about their immigration status, but employees don’t need to answer
A judicial warrant changes the rules. A judge signs off on it only after reviewing sworn statements that a person committed a crime—an immigration-related crime (such as illegal entry or document fraud) or any crime (such as assault, theft, and so on). Remember, simply being in the United States without permission is a civil violation, not a crime.
Read the whole article.
Here also is a very good article about administrative arrest warrants and the problems with them. Although this article mainly deals with intrusions into private property or the home, there are some principles at play.
B. Immigration Officers Are Law Enforcement
Immigration law enforcement agents (previously known as INS,
currently known as ICE) are statutorily empowered to issue administrative
arrest warrants based on probable cause without judicial oversight.54
But why? Would the Framers have allowed British officers the power to
decide for themselves, without personal observation, that an individual
had committed a wrong meriting physical custody? Imagine two British
officers discussing and comparing evidence without interposing a neutral
magistrate between them; does this sound like the Framers’ design? The
entire purpose of requiring both warrants and probable cause was to ensure
that law enforcement didn’t decide for themselves who (or what) should
be searched and who should be seized.55 The I-200 immigration warrant
approach seems at odds with history, if not originalism.56
Yet modern immigration administrative arrest warrants are issued
entirely by executive law enforcement officials.57 If an ICE officer avers
that she has probable cause that a named individual is an immigrant visa
overstay, she can present her probable cause to a superior ICE officer and an I-200 administrative arrest warrant will issue.58 There is no requirement
that a neutral and detached magistrate judge analyze the evidence or arrest
warrant to confirm it meets the probable cause determination. Instead, two
law enforcement officers (ICE agents) make an extra-judicial assessment
of probable cause and the I-200 warrant is issued.
Occurs to me that someone in jail may already have information based on whether they are citizens or not and intrusive databases like Palintir or Flock may play into that. Who makes sure that ICE is following the law?
Here is the agreement, I got through Texas Public Information Request
Here are my comments and questions about this
- Why does ICE not require judicial warrants. They certainly would have to have judicial instead of merely administrative warrants in other cases, for example, entering someone’s home. Administrative warrants are based only on an internal determination that the is probable cause to believe someone is removable. So… based on what? Hopefully it’s not a Kavanaugh Stop issue. Because, however, a jail is not a private space and an agreement, as in this case, is drawn up, it bypasses the usual authority that only a judicial warrant has “It’s also important to keep in mind that these administrative warrants do not grant an ICE officer general law enforcement powers to conduct searches or arrests unrelated to immigration violations. This also means that they do not permit the arrest of anyone other than the person specifically named on the warrant unless independent probable cause exists.” At what point are the people presumably transferred to ICE given due process and a bond hearing? I like to think people are not just thrown into mass detention facilities without due process. That sounds like concentration camps of which the US is building a bunch. To do otherwise is to be taking actions incompatible with the constitution
What's going with habeas and ICE kidnappings is a perfect example of what I mean when I say courts won't save us. Recently, ICE/the BIA made up a rule, saying nearly everyone ICE kidnaps is subject to "mandatory detention" (ie, no bail/bond). 282 out of 288 of judges to hear habeas cases disagree.
— n_th_n (@n-th-n.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 9:09 AM
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Judge orders four held in new immigration unit at Angola prison to be released A judge found that the federal government was indefinitely holding the four men in “Camp 57,” the immigration facility at Angola also known as “Louisiana Lockup," in violation of their constitutional rights.
— Verite News (@veritenews.org) February 10, 2026 at 2:21 PM
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So, the person that signed this locally is Sheriff Alan West. Since, according to the document, there can be additional personnel, as long as they have taken training and are certified. It appears to me that this is a sort of pipeline from jail to an ICE facility and it’s not clear to me where due process fits in here? Can, for example, a detained person refuse to answer questions. What level of criminality is investigated? The worst of the worst? I think everyone can agree we don’t want horrible non-citizesn criminals in this country but what if the crime is a traffic ticket? Or, not a crime at all, since under federal law, being present in the US is primarily a civil violation leading to removal and related immigration penalties, not a standalone crime.
On page 4 there’s an interesting section about how the local LEA that participates “will be treated as Federal employees only for purposes of Federal Tort Claims… when performing a function on behalf of ICE … participating LEA personnel will enjoy the same defenses and immunities from personal liabiity for their in-scope acts that are available to ICE officers…. “
I do not personally believe that any ICE agents should have even qualified immunity but there is also no doubt that ICE has been told they have full immunity, which is not true. Cities and States can still charge them for crimes.
I support law enforcement but not ICE.
I was also told by the Sheriff’s Department (thanks, Melanie) that no administrative warrants have been served. This is as of 2/22/2026.
Incidentally, if any reader sees something that needs correction or has additional source documents, feel free to leave a comment.
Side note: Madison Sheahan signed this as Deputy Director on 9/22/2025 but is now running in Ohio against Marci Kaptur. I find this woman to be creepy. She supported “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida. She also supported a notorious detention center in Louisiana No idea how accurate this is but here’s a post from Rooster
At tonight's Lucas County Republican meeting, Sheahan tried to leave without answering questions and the Republicans in attendance heckled her into answering a few. Potential voters called her appearance a waste of time. Madison doesn't have the juice
— Pazuzu (@pazuzuonline.bsky.social) January 19, 2026 at 8:16 PM
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Madison Sheahan, the fish fascist who quit ICE to run a carpetbagging Congressional campaign in #OH09, is going to realize very quickly she’s not safe from the anti-transgender hate her side has peddled.
— The Rooster (@rooster.info) January 16, 2026 at 6:31 PM
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Awful person Madison Sheahdn involved in this case too that was recently ruled on
Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to allow the Venezuelan men it sent to El Salvador last year to return to the U.S. and challenge their removal. The order comes amid the federal government’s ongoing resistance to bring the Venezuelan nationals back.
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) February 16, 2026 at 6:16 PM
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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to allow Venezuelan men who were previously expelled to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador to return to the United States and challenge their removal from the country.
Early last year, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) — a rarely used, 18th century wartime law — to fast-track the men’s removal from the United States, alleging that they were members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. The men were subsequently released to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange between Washington and Caracas.
The administration’s decision to rapidly remove the men to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador became one of the first flash points in Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. But it has not stood up well in court.
n his order published Thursday, James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, stressed that his court had ruled in December that the Trump administration denied the men due process. His previous order also offered the government a chance to propose steps to allow the Venezuelan nationals to challenge their expulsion.
“Apparently not interested in participating in this process, the Government’s responses essentially told the Court to pound sand,” Boasberg wrote.
As a result, Boasberg has now ordered the government to “facilitate” the men’s return to the U.S. or allow them to challenge their removal from abroad. Should they choose to come back to the U.S., the government must also cover the cost of their travel.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Madison Sheahan announced Thursday she is stepping away from her position to run for Congress in Ohio. https://cnn.it/4a1Ki0z
— CNN (@cnn.com) January 15, 2026 at 1:31 PM
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