Opinion: 287(g) is Impacting Communities Across the United States. Here’s What You Need to Know.

• July 30, 2025, 8:36 am America/Los_Angeles

As ICE continues its campaign of terrorism against immigrants, tourists, and people who don’t fit into Stephen Miller’s vision of Nazi America, you might ask: what does it look like here?

ICE raids have been happening throughout Irvine since May, as the federal government’s masked goons terrorize communities across the country: the June 12^th kidnappings were yet another reminder that no one is safe.

Ash Alvandi, vice president of local civil rights advocate AJSOCAL, elaborated on the tactics we’re seeing in Irvine when speaking at a Democrats of Greater Irvine meeting on July 2^nd: aside from ICE kidnapping people trying to attend their immigration hearings, which a class-action lawsuit seeks to stop, he told those of us in attendance that ICE is currently going for the “low-hanging fruit”. Basically, they’re kidnapping immigrants from public places they’re likely to be, like Home Depots in Sacramento on July 17^th (in violation of a judge’s order, of course).

A 287(g) agreement refers to a section of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The provision authorizes ICE to sign agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, granting their officers immigration enforcement powers. (You can find lists of currently participating agencies, as well as agencies with pending agreements, here). There are three models of the agreement.

In the jail enforcement model, deputized officers can question people who have already been arrested on state or local charges about their immigration status, hold non-citizens in jail for up to two days, and cause them to be kidnapped into detainment upon their release from local custody.

The warrant service program has ICE train officers to “execute ICE administrative warrants”. The viral video in which ICE agents blew open a Huntington Park door to find a crying mother and her three children, for example, was an instance of ICE illegally “serving” an administrative warrant — although in this case it was federal officers serving the warrant, the warrant service program gives local officers in the program the training to do this over and over again in communities nationwide.

(As a reminder, an administrative warrant does not authorize the search of private homes: they are issued by federal agencies or immigration “judges” —who are not judges, but administrative officials that are part of the executive branch. It is not a judicial warrant, which is issued by a court and signed by an actual judge. For more information and assistance, see the Immigration Law Rights Center’s “know your rights” page.)

The task force model deputizes officers to kidnap people off the streets. This sort of behavior is the most visible—that is, what the masked thugs who break into cars to steal children are doing.

California is one of seven states where state law forbids 287(g) agreements: Senate Bill 54 was signed in 2017 and went into effect the following year. ACLU SoCal explains that it forbids local police, such as municipal police or a county sheriff’s department, from doing things like sharing non-public information about arrested individuals with ICE or detaining people for ICE to kidnap later.

Even though these agreements are illegal in California, many people in states where they are legal still don’t know about them or how to pressure their counties to vacate them. This is, to be clear, by design—the fascists are betting that people don’t care about the administrative processes that they use to terrorize us. An example on the national level is the damning filing in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, where he details his torture in CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — the El Salvadoran prison in which he was imprisoned by the United States without trial). Garcia and more than a hundred other kidnappees were beaten, starved, and threatened with death daily. In his case, as with too many others, the government has consistently claimed “administrative error” as an excuse for trafficking him—washing their hands before the court even as they seek to deport him again on made-up charges.

It is clear that these 287(g) agreements are ruinous to overall community health. ICE’s intent, whether they have these agreements or not, is to create a climate of fear. On Independence Day, the local Indivisible and 50501 groups held a food drive to distribute food and other supplies to Irvine residents too scared of being kidnapped to even buy groceries. In Florida, cities have vacated and then re-instated their agreements after threats from the governor and state attorney general, both of whom have unequivocally supported ICE’s terrorism of communities.

In addition to the physical and mental trauma of the immediate violence carried out by the masked goons who kidnap them, detained people are placed in disgustingly inhumane conditions; WIRED reports people are sleeping on floors or in plastic containers. Detainees’ strokes, seizures and forced miscarriages have been exacerbated not only by these conditions but through geographic fact: ICE builds these camps away from where people actually live, meaning it takes longer for emergency medical services to arrive—if they ever do.

ICE wants to hide this from the public. On June 9th, Representatives Cisneros (CA-31), Chu (CA-28) and Tran (CA-47) were illegally denied access to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, despite their Constitutional power to investigate. New illegal “guidelines” require at least 72 hours’ notice from Congresspeople and 24 hours’ notice from staff, during which ICE sweeps the evidence of their illegal activities under the rug—rather like how mob cops let gangsters know in advance what drug deals would be raided. Even under these illegal guidelines, they still don’t want people who want the truth to see their crimes— on July 15^th, Reps. Obernolte (CA-23), Ruiz (CA-25) and Torres (CA-35) tried to enter the very same facility, but only the Republican Obernolte was let in. When asked if Rep. Min was engaging in similar efforts, his office redirected me to an email for his communications director, who did not respond.

Lest you think ICE’s kidnappings are limited to LA, it’s happening here. Irvine’s immigration resources page claims that, in compliance with SB 54, “[t]he Irvine Police Department is not involved in any federal immigration enforcement”. It also repeats the lie that ICE operations are based on detaining people “under investigation for criminal activity” and not their immigration status. It is difficult to imagine that the car wash employees kidnapped on July 1^st were posing any threat to our community, or that the man posting “know your rights” flyers had done anything other than attempt to help. (Councilmember Carroll’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Cooperation with ICE” takes many forms: it may look like overt militarized violence, but it also might look like “migrant roundups”, where police—even in places without 287(g) agreements—physically force people into places where ICE can kidnap and traffic them later. Irvine might say it’s following the law, and it might even be true. However, repeating lies that normalize what ICE is doing encourages people who don’t know any better to believe that ICE is less dangerous than it really is. To put it another way, it treats the people kidnapping professors who protect the disabled from ICE tear gas like they’re not monsters. Every ICE agent lies and abuses our trust to directly hurt us at every waking moment, and the city actively helping them do it is unacceptable. We need to let them know that every second of the day.

Of course, this talk of cooperation is only so useful without looking at what our representatives are doing to shape the conditions under which it takes place. None of this discussion is possible without the new federal budget, which cut Medi-Cal to pump our money into concentration camps and other ICE operations, like the Florida Everglades camp that “opened” on July 1^st. Young Kim (CA-40) voted to support the bill after supporting ICE for violently beating and kidnapping a father of three U.S. marines in her district.  He was released on July 15^th, over a month later, not that she cares.)

In contrast, Irvine’s representative, Dave Min (CA-47), introduced an amendment to the federal budget “prohibiting ICE agents from wearing face coverings and requiring them to clearly identify themselves when prompted”, adding that “[i]t’s time we push back against ICE’s lawlessness.” Although the amendment failed in the final vote, it was at least an acknowledgement of how ICE’s terror tactics were and are hurting our community. When asked for comment on further actions, the office directed me to email the communications director, who did not respond.

However, Min himself held a telephone town hall on 7/23 where he expressed his concerns about ICE activity, denouncing federal agents’ militarization and “people purporting to be ICE agents […] attacking, beating people that were just there”, as well as attacking federal officials. (Min was likely referring to New Jersey Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver’s political arrest and indictment on phony “assault” charges for being hit by an ICE agent while attempting to conduct Congressional oversight of a detention facility in May). He also promised to “[visit] some of these places in Santa Ana and elsewhere”, presumably referring to ICE detention facilities.

Min’s framing of the need for accountability was curious, to say the least: he made repeated reference to his discussions of ICE with law enforcement, saying that they “don’t understand why ICE is wearing masks” or “why they’re attacking and beating elected officials”. Min ran, and won, on a program of promoting public safety: it’s no surprise that he chose to frame it that way. However, given that the purpose of ICE wearing masks is to confuse and scare people into thinking they might be legitimate law enforcement, this focus on law enforcement’s opinions instead of the general community’s might hamper his promise to “continue to keep fighting to hold ICE accountable”.

There have also been some efforts to reduce the harm that ICE is doing, patchwork as they are. Irvine immigrants’ rights organizations, like the Orange County Justice Fund and Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights, are organizing in the community.

On February 2^nd, California state Senators Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín introduced the No Secret Police Act, SB 627. According to Weiner’s press release, the bill “prohibits law enforcement at all levels from covering their faces while conducting operations in the state of California”. The bill passed the state Senate on May 8^th, and can be tracked through the Assembly here. Federally, Senator Alex Padilla introduced the VISIBLE Act on July 8^th alongside Sen. Booker of New Jersey, which would require federal immigration enforcement officers to “display clearly visible identification during public-facing enforcement actions.” (Sen. Padilla, as you may recall, was thrown to the ground and handcuffed on June 12^th by more masked thugs: he had dared to question DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s assertion that the National Guard illegally occupying Los Angeles was a good thing.) The bill currently sits in the Committee on the Judiciary, and can be tracked here.

The problem with waiting for legislation, of course, is the wait—even if these bills pass, and everyone should contact their legislators to make that more likely, ICE is kidnapping people every single day. Doing nothing, and hoping someone else will save us, is choosing to abandon every single one of them.

It is reasonable to read all of this and be afraid. This is scary! But there is a world of difference between fear and inaction, and it is a world the government does not want you to realize exists. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and the thugs in masks want us to be so paralyzed by their intimidation that you stop stepping up for your neighbors, and I hope—I believe— Irvine will tell them no.

Having said all that, here are some things you can do:

• Court-watch—attend immigration courts. ICE has been kidnapping people after coordinating with immigration “judges” to have their proceedings dropped: New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested after attempting to stop one such kidnapping on bogus charges of “assaulting an officer”, and after all charges were dropped continued to attend. All you have to do is be present and record any sightings of ICE officers at your local courthouse, which you can find here. You can learn more about your rights when interacting with ICE officers from ACLU SoCal.
• Find your local Indivisible group. The national organization is sponsoring a training effort to fight authoritarianism starting July 16^th, which you can join here.
• Download the 5Calls app. This is an easy way to get in the habit of calling your elected officials, since the app provides your representatives’ numbers and a script for each issue.
• Attend city council meetings and submit comments, either regular or electronic. They occur on every second and fourth Tuesday at Irvine City Hall on the corner of Alton and Harvard (where the Sunday protests are). It’s important to pressure the city to resist federal tyranny—and hold them accountable when they abandon us to it.
• Attend your representatives’ town halls. When “in recess”—i.e. not on Capitol Hill—members of Congress hold town halls as a way to connect with their district and better represent them. If you live in. You can read this Indivisible guide on how to prepare and make your voice heard: if you’re represented by Young Kim, who hasn’t held one in four years, then you can use this guide (also from Indivisible) to hold one highlighting her absence.

It’s going to take all of us to fight this. I hope you’ll join me in not only protecting our democracy, but the basic dignity of our neighbors, friends, and community.