Less than a week after Las Vegas was placed on a federal list of “sanctuary jurisdictions," officials from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department revealed they have applied to reenter a formal partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The partnership, known as a 287(g) agreement, deputizes local police officers to carry out immigration enforcement duties in their jails. Under the pending agreement listed online, Metro officers would now be allowed to hold undocumented people in their jails for an additional two days so ICE can pick them up for longer-term detention. 

This is a shift from Metro’s most recent policy, where it notified ICE of immigrants accused of certain crimes and about their release date, giving ICE a chance to take custody of them.

Las Vegas Metro did not respond to a request for comment from The Nevada Independent, but in an interview with Channel 8, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said that he did not want undocumented criminals “in my community anymore.”

A spokesperson for the City of Las Vegas, David Riggleman, told The Indy, “We're following what [Metro] is doing, and we'll monitor that and then adjust if we need.” 

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department only has direct jurisdiction over the Clark County Detention Center, which means that jails in the City of Las Vegas, Henderson or North Las Vegas are not included in the 287(g) agreement. However, people charged with certain crimes, such as a felony, will be transferred to the Clark County Detention Center, where Metro has the pending agreement. 

A spokesperson for the City of Henderson said it will not be participating in the 287(g) programs. The City of North Las Vegas did not immediately respond to request for comment.

About 350 people are currently eligible for ICE pickup from Metro detention, according to McMahill. Earlier this year, McMahill also said that ICE picks up about 40 percent of the individuals they are notified about and they make daily pickups from the jail.

Although Metro applied last week to be part of 287(g), it wasn’t immediately clear whether the agency did so in response to Las Vegas being labeled a sanctuary jurisdiction. The Department of Homeland Security quietly took their list of sanctuary cities offline this week after it faced heavy backlash. 

Kristi Noem, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, said on Fox News that “some of the cities have pushed back” against the list because they don’t have laws explicitly extending protections to undocumented people. 

“They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals,” Noem said.

In the short time the list was up, elected officials in Nevada pushed back against the designation. Mayor Shelley Berkley called the label “an inadvertent error” and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo said in a statement that “the City of Las Vegas is not a sanctuary jurisdiction.” 

Senate Minority Leader Robin Titus (R-Wellington), however, said there “was some truth in it,” and that “they could do better in Las Vegas,” calling on the city and other jurisdictions in Nevada to enter a 287(g) program.

Still, the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions it labels as sanctuaries could have had a profound impact in Nevada. The state receives billions of dollars each year toward Medicaid and other state programming, while Metro has been awarded more than $50 million in federal grants over the past decade.

According to McMahill, the department risked losing about $30 million in funding for programs and personnel if it is deemed to be noncompliant with the Trump administration’s orders. Metro doesn’t have enough resources to help with immigration tasks beyond the limited enforcement activities it’s already conducting in Clark County jails, he said previously.

The application to join 287(g) marks a shift for McMahill, who has previously said that Metro would only enter into such an agreement if the federal government passed a law requiring them to do so. 

But Congress has yet to officially pass a law requiring 287(g). Multiple court cases have ruled that participation is voluntary and would otherwise go against the 10th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from directing state governments to enforce federal laws. 

However, three counties in Nevada — Lyon, Douglas, and Mineral — have active 287(g) agreements. Nye County said that part of its reasoning for applying for the agreement is that it could risk being deemed “noncompliant” with federal immigration law. 

It’s not the first time Metro has collaborated with ICE. Metro had an agreement until 2019, when the agency, under the leadership of then-Sheriff Lombardo, withdrew from it. That move came after a federal district court ruled that ICE detainers could only be honored in states with laws that specifically address civil immigration arrests.