Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar has signed an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to allow correction officers to serve warrants to inmates wanted by federal immigration authorities.
The ICE program, called 287g, enlists local sheriff’s offices to assist with immigration enforcement.
Broome County is only opting into the “warrant service officer” portion of 287g, which allows correction officers to serve immigration warrants to people in the jail.
Akshar said previously, if an individual detained in the jail on a separate criminal charge was found to have an outstanding warrant with ICE, the sheriff’s office would have to wait for ICE agents to travel to the jail to serve an immigration warrant.
“It really is a training program in which you identify and nominate people within your agency to be properly trained by ICE to be able to serve those warrants for people who are in your custody,” Akshar said.
The current agreement does not allow officers to arrest or detain unauthorized immigrants in the broader community. But Akshar said the sheriff’s office could assist ICE in other ways if asked by the agency.
“This is where I am today. If tomorrow, ICE said ‘we need your assistance’ in some effort, I would help them,” Akshar said. “Now, there are limits to that help as well, right? I mean, there are a lot of controversy or conversation about those proactive activities in and around schools or safe spaces, if you will. So we have to take those requests on a case-by-case basis.”
The 287g program has drawn criticism from some immigration advocates and law enforcement over concerns that it erodes trust in immigrant communities. County sheriffs in other parts of the country have argued participating fully in the program could open them up to legal liability and strain staffing capacity.
Akshar said because of the limited nature of the warrant service officer portion of the program, the sheriff’s office believes the agreement will not pose a significant staffing issue.
“We currently have the space and the staff to accommodate additional detainees, and will continue to communicate and coordinate with our federal partners at the U.S. Marshals Service and ICE to ensure that our staffing and population levels remain optimal for maintaining the health and safety of both our staff and our incarcerated individuals alike,” Akshar wrote in a statement.
Currently, the jail is holding 21 ICE detainees. Akshar said that number is higher since the Trump administration took over.
“Based on the priority of the Trump administration and Homeland Security, you are seeing just a general increase in activity around immigration enforcement, and that obviously has a trickle down effect,” Akshar said.
Participating in this part of the program, he said, allows the sheriff’s office to be prepared to meet the requests of the federal government.
Over 220 law enforcement agencies across the country have opted to collaborate with ICE since January.
In New York, only two other counties participate in any part of 287g: Rensselaer County and Nassau County. Those counties have their own specific agreement with ICE that go beyond just serving warrants in jail.
In Rensselaer County, sheriff’s officers can interrogate and process detainees on behalf of the agency. In Nassau County’s expansive “task force model,” detectives and officers have been deputized to arrest people out in the community, outside of the jail.
Akshar said at this time, he is not considering participating in the models Rensselaer and Nassau counties use to collaborate with ICE.
“Frankly and very candidly speaking, I don't need to be part of a task force model or a jail enforcement model to keep the people safe. We can go out and do that any given day,” Akshar said. “I do want to be abundantly clear though, that if any one of our federal partners, regardless of what letter the agency starts with, asks me for help today, tomorrow, a week from now, the answer would be yes.”