As President Donald Trump begins to crack down on illegal immigration, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office has become the first jurisdiction in Nevada to sign a 287(g) agreement — joining the controversial program that deputizes local law officers to enforce federal immigration laws — in about five years.

Douglas County signed two 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last Wednesday, according to the ICE website. One of these agreements will authorize local law enforcement officers to execute ICE administrative warrants in their jails. The other, signed under the newly resumed Task Force Model program, allows certain Douglas County officers who are in the community to question and possibly arrest people they suspect to be noncitizens in their day-to-day activities if they are believed to have violated immigration law. 

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The stakes of increased police collaboration with ICE could be especially high in Nevada, which has the nation’s largest per-capita undocumented population. In Northern Nevada’s Douglas County, a rural area of about 50,000 people that includes Minden and Gardnerville and borders Lake Tahoe, about 6 percent of the population is foreign-born, while about 13 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the 2023 Census.

The reintroduction of the Task Force Model is part of the Trump administration’s push to expand 287(g) agreements, which are eyed as a potential force multiplier amidst ICE staffing shortages. Without significantly increasing immigration enforcement personnel, experts have said that it would be logistically difficult for Trump to carry out his proposed mass deportation campaign.

Opponents of 287(g) agreements have called the Task Force Model especially problematic, saying it erodes community trust and increases the likelihood of civil rights violations. Unlike the Task Force Model, the Warrant Service Officer model (the other agreement Douglas County has) and the Jail Enforcement Model only allow law enforcement to perform the functions of an immigration officer within the enforcement agency’s jails.

The Trump administration recently revived 287(g) Task Force Model agreements after they were discontinued following a 2011 Department of Justice investigation that discovered widespread racial profiling and other discrimination against Latinos in Arizona.

“That type of model has not existed for some time, and for good reason,” said Sadmira Ramic, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada (ACLU). “After the investigation, they found that there were severe violations of the Constitution when it came to enforcement of this model.”

Ramic, however, said there are currently “lots of unknowns” with how the Douglas County agreement will pan out given that it is not available online. She said that the ACLU is monitoring the situation. 

In 2022, Nevada passed the Equal Rights Amendment that enshrined equal rights for all in the state Constitution “regardless of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin.” This protection would prohibit a local law enforcement officer from discriminating against someone based on their nationality or ethnicity. 

Other states that also have 287(g) agreements, such as Georgia and Idaho, don’t have the same equal rights protections.

Douglas County isn’t alone in striking up such an agreement, with ICE noting that 11 of the 15 new agreements signed nationwide last week were under the Task Force Model. State policymakers, however, say there are currently no plans to introduce legislation prohibiting 287(g) agreements in Nevada, although there were attempts in prior sessions.

Athar Haseebullah, the executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said a ban on such cooperation with ICE “is unlikely to happen with our current governor,” Republican Joe Lombardo. 

Up until this week, there were no active 287(g) agreements in the state. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had its 287(g) agreement end in 2019 under then-Sheriff Lombardo after a federal district court ruled that ICE detainers could only be honored in states with laws that specifically address civil immigration arrests.

Lyon and Nye counties had 287(g) agreements that were last renewed in 2020.