'This does give them the right to race profile us': AZ lawmakers push immigration bills forward
- LUCHA Newsroom
- Apr 8
- 4 min read
KJZZ | By Alisa Reznick, Wayne Schutsky
Over the last two months, the Trump administration has looked to expand partnerships with local law enforcement as part of its mass deportation campaign.
Right now, only a handful of agencies in Arizona have official agreements with the federal government to help with that kind of enforcement. But Republican state lawmakers are trying to change that, by creating new laws that would prompt more cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Senate President Warren Petersen’s Arizona ICE Act would ban local governments from adopting rules that prohibit cooperation with federal immigration officials. It would also require local sheriffs and state prison authorities to hold onto people already in their custody if ICE requests it.
“If you have been arrested and you are in prison, they must hold you for 48 hours, so you can be turned over to ICE,” he said.
Initially, Petersen also wanted to force local law enforcement to enter into 287-g agreements with the federal government, which outline specific ways sheriffs and others can participate in immigration-related activities with ICE’s permission.
But, he stripped that piece of the legislation, saying sheriffs were opposed to forced cooperation.
The Arizona Sheriffs Association, led by Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes, now supports the bill.
“It simply prohibits local governments and officials from making policies that would restrict government officials of course, but in law enforcement’s case, the ability to keep communities safe,” he said.
Petersen’s bill is just one of several pieces of GOP legislation designed to force Arizona agencies to help ICE detain, house or even deport immigrants in the country without legal authorization.
There’s also a bill that would require the governor and Attorney General’s Office to cooperate with ICE, and another that would let ICE house people in a shuttered state prison.
Gov. Katie Hobbs would likely veto those measures. But Petersen hasn’t ruled out sending his bill directly to voters – one year after Arizonans approved a GOP border measure that was previously vetoed by Hobbs.
“Yeah, I think this is one of those things that could go that direction,” he said.
Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple says his 287-g agreement has been in place since 2008. It’s activated when someone is booked into his county’s jail on a state charge.
“At some point during their incarceration, one of my trained 287-g employees is going to run that individual through a federal database to find out if they have a deportation order, an ICE warrant for their arrest, or any other federal warrant for their arrest,” he said.
From there, Teeple says, ICE has 72 hours to pick that person up. There are currently two 287-g officers within the Pinal County jail system and plans to increase that number. The latest available figures — from 2022 — show 41 non-citizens detained in the county were referred to federal authorities.
Teeple says the program works for his county and he plans to continue it. But he doesn’t support making other counties do it, too.
“As a 287-g agency, I do not like any state law that requires sheriffs to do something that’s an unfunded mandate or may not be best for their county,” he said.
Teeple says that’s why he didn’t support the original version of the Arizona ICE Act, which would have forced 287-g onto local jurisdictions. Under the latest version, local and state jurisdictions are able to enter into partnerships with the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to enforce immigration laws.
It also directs the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate jurisdictions that stand in the way of federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Jason Houser, former ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden, says legislation to include additional partnership opportunities is in line with the federal government’s efforts to expand its deportation campaign.
“So clearly somebody realized after reading the limitations of 287-g, it’s really not that helpful, if you’re really trying to operationalize mass removal and detention,” he said.
Houser says it takes time for ICE to train local 287-g officers. And there’s also no guarantee the person in custody is actually deportable.
“They then are bonded out, and then an officer just spent two days doing that instead of targeting some drug cartel member,” he said.
While local jurisdictions are still part of the Trump administration’s broader deportation plan, Houser says cooperation will likely include additional agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol or the Justice Department. He sees conversations limited to 287-g agreements as out of touch with the scale at which the federal government is attempting to change immigrant policy.
“They are changing the paradigm of how they’re going after and inflicting these new policies, and how they want to get to 1 million removals,” he said.
He says that includes things like the Alien Enemies Act, which Trump has used to deport hundreds of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, despite a court order, and the administration’s targeting of immigrants with the legal status to be in the U.S.
A recent report from 60 Minutes found 75% of the 238 Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador in March have no criminal record.
That idea — of being the target of federal scrutiny — is one Rocky Rivera knows well. He’s a Tucson-based activist with the progressive group Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA. He’s a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in Bisbee, and his dad was a 23-year U.S. Army veteran. Around 2008, Rivera remembers taking his dad up to Tucson for cancer treatment and being stopped by a sheriff’s deputy, who asked if they were U.S. citizens.
“All he did was ask the young sheriff if he was a citizen himself, he said, 'are you?’ And right then, the whole situation escalated, he got put in handcuffs,” he said.
Rivera said they waited there until a Border Patrol agent came to the scene and recognized his father from the local credit union, where he’d long been part of the board of directors, approving large-scale loans.
He believes if his dad could be the subject of profiling, anyone can.
As for recent legislative efforts to revive local immigration enforcement, Rivera says he thinks history will repeat itself.
“This does give them the right to race profile us. There's no way around it,” he said. “They're going to do it again.”
The Arizona ICE Act has advanced through the Legislature with only Republican votes and is currently pending in the Arizona House of Representatives.
Kommentit