Fewer than one in ten immigration arrests come from the DHS program
An analysis of government data by The Wall Street Journal found that the DHS task force program has yielded fewer than one in ten immigration arrests nationwide under the Trump administration — about 46,500 of around 576,000 from January 2025 through July 2026. The count reflects all 287(g) arrests, including the task force, warrant service and jail enforcement programs, with data through the end of July, according to notes accompanying the analysis. DHS has distributed more than $200 million to its law enforcement partners since January 2025, a Trump administration official said, and the administration has earmarked $1 billion from Congress for the partnerships. The Justice Department this summer announced $3 billion in grants to state and local governments that cooperate on immigration enforcement.
More than 1,800 law enforcement agencies signed up for the task force after President Trump revived the program in his second term — state police, county sheriff and local police departments, state wildlife agencies and even state auditors, the Journal reported. The Wall Street Journal described the program as “a cash cow for state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide.” After a department turns over a single deportable immigrant, it qualifies to receive $60,000 a year for each deputized officer, regardless of additional arrests. Agencies are not obligated to request the money. DHS requires participating agencies to obtain its permission before disclosing how many arrests they make or how much federal money they are eligible to receive, and DHS declined to release those figures for any participating agency. The Journal used DHS’s published funding formula to calculate eligible reimbursement amounts, and 14 agencies in five states confirmed those findings.
Sparsely populated jurisdictions with few immigrants make up the majority of new recruits, according to the Journal. Doddridge County, West Virginia, a jurisdiction of about 7,600 residents, joined the program in February. Sheriff Clinton Boring said he did not expect to see many immigrants and had his sights on new squad cars. “I honestly don’t think there are any Hispanics that live in Doddridge,” Boring said. “When you get an opportunity to get possibly $100,000 for equipment or vehicles, that’s a no-brainer.” Within six months, Boring said, his deputies detained two people living in the U.S. illegally and the department received more than $137,000 in federal funds. Even if his deputies take no one else into custody, the department is eligible for a payment equal to more than a quarter of its annual budget.
The two arrests came after traffic stops along a stretch of U.S. 50 that bisects Doddridge County, a federally funded highway that runs from West Sacramento, California, to Ocean City, Maryland, Boring said. He said he would normally have shied away from the red tape of joining a federal program, but the task force was too good to pass up — particularly after Congress passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last summer, setting aside $1 billion for the partnership programs. DHS set limited requirements to enroll officers: two years of law enforcement experience and an online training course. Boring said he will not request further funds until his deputies deliver another arrest. “I’m an old country boy,” he said. “If you sign up to do a job, then you do that job. If you don’t do that job, you don’t get paid.” He is now awaiting delivery of two new squad cars paid for with DHS funds.
In West Virginia, where 14 agencies have joined the task force since February, about 1% of the workforce is immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank. Law enforcement agencies serving communities with few immigrants are eligible for the same per-officer pay as those serving communities with many, the Journal noted.
The program is most profitable for large departments. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in Florida signed up more than 970 deputies, making it eligible for roughly $14.5 million in DHS funds from April to June, state records show — more than $2 million for each of its seven immigration arrests in that quarter. The Venice Police Department in Venice, Florida, tallied one federal immigration detention in September 2025 and has since requested $895,000; it can continue collecting funds every quarter as long as it remains on the task force.
California and New York, among the states with the largest immigrant populations, bar local police from joining the DHS program. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was among the first governors to require state and county law enforcement to join the task force, adding $250 million in state funding for participating agencies, including those outside state control. Texas and Georgia passed similar mandates for their county sheriffs. About 80% of the local agencies participating in DHS partnerships are now in the task force program, according to the Journal.
Deciding how to spend the funds is left largely to each department. The Lee County Sheriff’s Office on Florida’s Gulf Coast requested its first funds in September 2025, receiving $7,500 for each qualified officer during the first three months of participation. Every quarter after January 2026, it claimed $15,000 for each officer, money earmarked for equipment or technical upgrades, and DHS covered overtime. From September 2025 to June 2026, the office requested more than $2 million from DHS, including $181,784 for Axon Tasers, $103,215 for 26 laptops and a new transport van. Lee County is one of at least 127 agencies across Florida eligible for the funds; as of June, state records show, those agencies have more than 7,600 active officers statewide and are eligible to collect at least $400 million annually.
Traffic stops are a central tool for immigration arrests in the three most productive task force states — Florida, Texas and Oklahoma — where highway patrol troopers make the bulk of the stops, either for apparent infractions or based on a tip from DHS. Participating officers contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine whether someone is in the U.S. illegally before taking them into custody, an ICE spokesperson said. The Florida Highway Patrol has taken more than 8,300 immigrants into custody since August 2025, the largest number of any single agency in the country, according to a Journal analysis of state records and federal immigration data; the agency was eligible for nearly $26 million from April through June.
Violence during traffic stops drew national attention after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in January and videos showing federal agents breaking car windows and yanking drivers out of vehicles. Days after the Good shooting, a Journal investigation identified 13 instances of immigration agents firing at or into civilian vehicles during the first year of President Trump’s second term, leaving at least eight people injured and two shot dead; at least five of those victims were U.S. citizens. In July, after two fatal shootings by federal officers in Houston and Biddeford, Maine, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin suspended traffic stops by ICE. President Trump overruled that decision a day later. Last month, an ICE officer shot and wounded a Venezuelan DoorDash delivery driver in Texas.
Mullin, speaking at a National Sheriffs Association conference in June, urged sheriffs to join the task force program so that federal agents could “be as invisible as possible” during their patrols. “We’re not in the streets arresting these individuals,” Mullin said. “You guys are simply picking them up for a traffic stop.”
A Journal review of bystander videos from Florida showed state and local officers deploying tactics similar to their federal counterparts during traffic stops, using Tasers and chokeholds and breaking vehicle windows. In one incident, Florida Highway Patrol officers pulled over Kenny Laynez, a U.S. citizen en route to a landscaping job with his mother and two co-workers, and called Customs and Border Protection agents for backup. Laynez recorded a CBP officer firing a Taser at a co-worker while officers pinned the man to the ground. “Just remember you can smell that too, with a $30,000 bonus,” an unidentified officer said moments later, according to the recording. Laynez and the two other passengers were taken into custody by federal immigration agents; Laynez was later released. Neither DHS nor the Florida Highway Patrol responded to questions about the arrest or the officer’s comment.
The partnership arrangement was created in 1996 and became known as 287(g), named for its section in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The law offers state and local jurisdictions three paid roles in immigration enforcement: serving federal warrants, holding people in jails for immigration violations and detaining people eligible for deportation through the task force program. The Obama administration shelved the task force program in 2012 after Justice Department investigations found that sheriff’s deputies in Arizona’s Maricopa County and North Carolina’s Alamance County disproportionately detained and arrested Latino drivers, including U.S. citizens, for minor violations or without cause. The Trump administration reversed course in January 2025. A DHS spokesperson said agencies become eligible for reimbursement only after an ICE-directed enforcement action, such as an apprehension or serving a warrant, and must show “continued performance” to receive quarterly funding.