Bolts reports on another Blue State push back to ICE. It discusses the 287(g) program:
… which deputizes local and state officers to act on ICE’s behalf, including by detaining people in jails past their scheduled release dates, then transferring those people to ICE custody. This program is a crucial force multiplier for ICE, largely because it expands ICE’s access to jails and prisons, where it can intercept people in greater numbers, and with greater ease, than in the field.
The good news is this:
Maryland, Maine, and New Mexico join six other blue states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington—in adopting laws to ban local and state agencies from partnering with ICE’s 287(g) program. New Jersey has a ban in place through an executive directive, though the state’s outgoing governor vetoed a bill that would have codified it into law in January.
Four states under full Democratic control—Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia—still have local or state agencies that have joined the 287(g) program, though there is currently active legislation in at least three of those states to limit or end these contracts.
These partnerships have been in place for decades but it’s only under Miller that they’ve been truly weaponized.
Sadly, it takes a full trifecta to get a ban. Republicans everywhere are thrilled to see the deportation atrocities so they won’t cooperate. But it’s good to at least see the Democratic states doing the right thing.