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Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The revival of an old program delegates Trump immigration enforcement to local police
As part of the Trump administration's push to carry out mass deportations, the agency responsible for immigration enforcement has aggressively revived and expanded a decades-old program that delegates immigration enforcement powers to state and local law enforcement agencies. Under the 287(g) program led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police officers can interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has rapidly expanded the number of signed agreements it has with law enforcement agencies across the country. The reason is clear. Those agreements vastly beef up the number of immigration enforcement staff available to ICE, which has about 6,000 deportation officers, as they aim to meet Trump's goal of deporting as many of the roughly 11 million people in the country illegally as they can. Here's a look at what these agreements are and what critics say about them: What is a 287(g) agreement and what's the benefit to ICE? These agreements are signed between a law enforcement agency and ICE and allow the law enforcement agency to perform certain types of immigration enforcement actions. There are three different types of agreements. —Under the 'jail services model,' law enforcement officers can screen people detained in jails for immigration violations. —The 'warrant service officer' model authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to comply with ICE warrants or requests on immigrants while they are at their agency's jails. —The 'task force model' gives local officers the ability to investigate someone's immigration status during their routine police duties. These agreements were authorized by a 1996 law, but it wasn't until 2002 that the federal government actually signed one of these agreements with a local agency. The first agreement was with Florida's Department of Law Enforcement. 'The benefit to ICE is that it expands the ability to enforce immigration law across multiple jurisdictions,' said John Torres, who served as acting director of ICE from 2008 to 2009. Earlier in his career, he said, he was assigned to the Los Angeles jail and would interview any foreign citizen who came through the jail to see if they were in the country illegally. But if a jail has a 287(g) agreement with ICE it frees up those agents at the jail to do something else. What's going on with these agreements under the Trump administration? The number of signed agreements has ballooned under Trump in a matter of months. In December of last year, ICE had 135 agreements with law enforcement agencies across 21 states. By May 19, ICE had signed 588 agreements with local and state agencies across 40 states, with an additional 83 agencies pending approval. Roughly half of the pacts are in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced the arrest of more than 1,100 immigrants in an orchestrated sweep between local and federal officials. Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has also allied himself with Trump on immigration, comes in second. Other states topping the list are Georgia and North Carolina. A majority of the agreements are with sheriff's departments, a reflection of the fact that they are largely responsible for running jails in America. But other agencies have also signed the agreements including the Florida and Texas National Guard, the Florida Department of Lottery Services and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The expansion of agreements 'has been unprecedented in terms of the speed and the breath,' said Amien Kacou, attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida. 'ICE under the Trump administration has made a push in every state essentially to have them cooperate," Kacou said. So what are the concerns? Immigrants, and their attorneys and advocates say these agreements can lead to racial profiling and there's not enough oversight. 'If you are an immigrant, or if you sound like an immigrant or you look like an immigrant, you are likely to be detained here in Florida,' said Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, executive director at Hope Community Center in Apopka, central Florida. These concerns are especially acute over the task force model since those models allow law enforcement officers to carry out immigration enforcement actions as part of their daily law enforcement work. Lena Graber, a senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center which advocates for immigrants, said that the Obama administration phased out the task force model in 2012 after concerns that law enforcement organizations authorized under it were racially profiling people when making arrests. The first Trump administration considered bringing back that model but ultimately did not, she said. Graber said using this model, the local law enforcement have most of the powers of ICE agents. 'They're functionally ICE agents,' she said. Rights groups say that in areas where 287(g) agreements are in place, people in the country illegally are less likely to reach out to law enforcement authorities when they're victims of or witness to a crime for fear that authorities will turn around and arrest them instead. 'This is finding methods to terrorize communities,' said Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South. 'They create immigration enforcement and local law enforcement which they are not trained or able to do in any sort of just manner.' Federal authorities and local law enforcement agencies deny those critics and maintain that officers follow the laws when detaining people. 'There is no racial profiling,' said Miami Border Patrol chief agent Jeffrey Dinise at a recent press conference along with Florida and ICE officials. He explained that officers may stop cars after traffic violations. They run the tag plates through immigration systems and can see the legal status of the person, he said. Torres also said that local law enforcement officers operating under 287(g) agreements aren't 'out on an island by themselves.' There's a lot of coordination with ICE agents and the local law enforcement officers. 'They're not asking them to operate independently on their own,' Torres said. How does law enforcement join? Law enforcement agencies nominate officers to participate in the 287(g) program. They have to be U.S. citizens and pass a background check. On its website, ICE has created templates of the forms that law enforcement agencies interested in joining the program can use. The training varies. According to ICE's website, officers in the 'task force model' must complete a 40-hour online course that covers such topics as immigration law, civil rights and liability issues. As of mid-March about 625 officers had been trained under that model, the website said, although that number is likely much higher now as law enforcement agencies are signing up regularly. For the 'jail enforcement model," there's a four week training as well as a refresher course. The Warrant Service Officer model requires eight hours of training. Austin Kocher, a researcher at Syracuse University in New York who focuses on immigration affairs, said that training has always been a challenge for the 287(g) program. It's expensive and often a strain on small departments to send them to a training center, so the training has gotten progressively shorter, he said.
Winnipeg Free Press
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
The revival of an old program delegates Trump immigration enforcement to local police
As part of the Trump administration's push to carry out mass deportations, the agency responsible for immigration enforcement has aggressively revived and expanded a decades-old program that delegates immigration enforcement powers to state and local law enforcement agencies. Under the 287(g) program led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police officers can interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has rapidly expanded the number of signed agreements it has with law enforcement agencies across the country. The reason is clear. Those agreements vastly beef up the number of immigration enforcement staff available to ICE, which has about 6,000 deportation officers, as they aim to meet Trump's goal of deporting as many of the roughly 11 million people in the country illegally as they can. Here's a look at what these agreements are and what critics say about them: What is a 287(g) agreement and what's the benefit to ICE? These agreements are signed between a law enforcement agency and ICE and allow the law enforcement agency to perform certain types of immigration enforcement actions. There are three different types of agreements. —Under the 'jail services model,' law enforcement officers can screen people detained in jails for immigration violations. —The 'warrant service officer' model authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to comply with ICE warrants or requests on immigrants while they are at their agency's jails. —The 'task force model' gives local officers the ability to investigate someone's immigration status during their routine police duties. These agreements were authorized by a 1996 law, but it wasn't until 2002 that the federal government actually signed one of these agreements with a local agency. The first agreement was with Florida's Department of Law Enforcement. 'The benefit to ICE is that it expands the ability to enforce immigration law across multiple jurisdictions,' said John Torres, who served as acting director of ICE from 2008 to 2009. Earlier in his career, he said, he was assigned to the Los Angeles jail and would interview any foreign citizen who came through the jail to see if they were in the country illegally. But if a jail has a 287(g) agreement with ICE it frees up those agents at the jail to do something else. What's going on with these agreements under the Trump administration? The number of signed agreements has ballooned under Trump in a matter of months. In December of last year, ICE had 135 agreements with law enforcement agencies across 21 states. By May 19, ICE had signed 588 agreements with local and state agencies across 40 states, with an additional 83 agencies pending approval. Roughly half of the pacts are in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced the arrest of more than 1,100 immigrants in an orchestrated sweep between local and federal officials. Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has also allied himself with Trump on immigration, comes in second. Other states topping the list are Georgia and North Carolina. A majority of the agreements are with sheriff's departments, a reflection of the fact that they are largely responsible for running jails in America. But other agencies have also signed the agreements including the Florida and Texas National Guard, the Florida Department of Lottery Services and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The expansion of agreements 'has been unprecedented in terms of the speed and the breath,' said Amien Kacou, attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida. 'ICE under the Trump administration has made a push in every state essentially to have them cooperate,' Kacou said. So what are the concerns? Immigrants, and their attorneys and advocates say these agreements can lead to racial profiling and there's not enough oversight. 'If you are an immigrant, or if you sound like an immigrant or you look like an immigrant, you are likely to be detained here in Florida,' said Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, executive director at Hope Community Center in Apopka, central Florida. These concerns are especially acute over the task force model since those models allow law enforcement officers to carry out immigration enforcement actions as part of their daily law enforcement work. Lena Graber, a senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center which advocates for immigrants, said that the Obama administration phased out the task force model in 2012 after concerns that law enforcement organizations authorized under it were racially profiling people when making arrests. The first Trump administration considered bringing back that model but ultimately did not, she said. Graber said using this model, the local law enforcement have most of the powers of ICE agents. 'They're functionally ICE agents,' she said. Rights groups say that in areas where 287(g) agreements are in place, people in the country illegally are less likely to reach out to law enforcement authorities when they're victims of or witness to a crime for fear that authorities will turn around and arrest them instead. 'This is finding methods to terrorize communities,' said Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South. 'They create immigration enforcement and local law enforcement which they are not trained or able to do in any sort of just manner.' Federal authorities and local law enforcement agencies deny those critics and maintain that officers follow the laws when detaining people. 'There is no racial profiling,' said Miami Border Patrol chief agent Jeffrey Dinise at a recent press conference along with Florida and ICE officials. He explained that officers may stop cars after traffic violations. They run the tag plates through immigration systems and can see the legal status of the person, he said. Torres also said that local law enforcement officers operating under 287(g) agreements aren't 'out on an island by themselves.' There's a lot of coordination with ICE agents and the local law enforcement officers. 'They're not asking them to operate independently on their own,' Torres said. How does law enforcement join? Law enforcement agencies nominate officers to participate in the 287(g) program. They have to be U.S. citizens and pass a background check. On its website, ICE has created templates of the forms that law enforcement agencies interested in joining the program can use. The training varies. According to ICE's website, officers in the 'task force model' must complete a 40-hour online course that covers such topics as immigration law, civil rights and liability issues. As of mid-March about 625 officers had been trained under that model, the website said, although that number is likely much higher now as law enforcement agencies are signing up regularly. For the 'jail enforcement model,' there's a four week training as well as a refresher course. The Warrant Service Officer model requires eight hours of training. Austin Kocher, a researcher at Syracuse University in New York who focuses on immigration affairs, said that training has always been a challenge for the 287(g) program. It's expensive and often a strain on small departments to send them to a training center, so the training has gotten progressively shorter, he said.
Newsweek
29-04-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Grid-Scale Battery Storage Companies Make $100B US Manufacturing Pledge
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A coalition of companies making and using large batteries for energy storage on the electric grid announced Tuesday a $100 billion investment commitment to make and buy grid batteries in the U.S. "We're investing to ensure that in five years, every part of the energy storage industry is anchored here in America," American Clean Power (ACP) CEO Jason Grumet said at an announcement event on Capitol Hill. ACP is a trade group representing companies along the entire clean energy supply chain. Grumet said the investment goal announced Tuesday is expected to generate 350,000 jobs and help power companies supply more electricity. "Storage is absolutely essential to meet skyrocketing demand," he said. Electricity demand is surging globally and in the U.S. due to the electrification of more appliances and home heating, the switch to EVs and the booming growth of power-hungry data centers. Renewable energy, especially solar, has become one of the cheapest and fastest ways to add more power supply. Large-scale battery storage helps to overcome the challenges from the intermittent nature of energy derived from the sun and wind, allowing power companies to match supply with times of peak demand. Storage can also help electric utility companies make the grid more resilient to interruptions from extreme weather, avoiding costly and dangerous outages. Workers assembling an iron-based battery at the Form Energy factory in Weirton, West Virginia. The clean energy company is creating much-needed jobs on the grounds of a former steel mill deep in Appalachian coal country.... Workers assembling an iron-based battery at the Form Energy factory in Weirton, West Virginia. The clean energy company is creating much-needed jobs on the grounds of a former steel mill deep in Appalachian coal country. More Courtesy of Form Energy The Energy Information Administration reported that a little more than 80 percent of the new electricity generation capacity added to the U.S. grid last year was a combination of solar and battery storage. ACP said companies that are already expanding or building new battery facilities include Tesla in Nevada, Fluence in Tennessee, LG Energy Solution in Michigan and Form Energy in West Virginia. "We need clean power, we need more power and we need the ability to store power," West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito said at the event. Form Energy's facility in Weirton, West Virginia sits on property once occupied by a now-shuttered steel mill, and the battery maker has created much-needed jobs in the rust belt community along the Ohio River. Capito's support for clean energy is remarkable given that her home state's once-dominant coal industry is often at odds with renewable energy, and Capito frequently joins her fellow Republicans in opposing climate action such as limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Capito and every other Republican in Congress in 2022 opposed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the country's most ambitious climate action in history. But renewable energy and the manufacturing activity related to the IRA have attracted more bipartisan support as big-money investments for clean tech facilities triggered by the law landed in Republican Districts and red states. The ACP event leaned into that bipartisan appeal, featuring two Republican lawmakers and no Democrats, and replacing any talk of climate action with phrases crafted for more Conservative appeal such as American competitiveness, economic growth, national energy security and an "all of the above" approach to energy. The companies ACP represents will need bipartisan support to salvage the most critical aspects of the IRA as the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans set about dismantling most of its climate-related components. The law's tax credits that support clean energy and domestic production of clean tech equipment are especially crucial. Mike Snyder, VP of Energy & Charging for Tesla, said at the event that tax credits are important for his company's effort to build all parts of batteries in the U.S. Tesla is best known as an EV maker, but the company also has a substantial presence in building batteries for grid storage. Snyder said the most expensive component of Tesla's Megapack battery is the battery cell, which is primarily made in China. "The difficult part of the supply chain is to figure out how to extract it from Chinese companies making the cells to U.S. companies," he said. Inside the AES Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System, which provides stored renewable energy to supply electricity during peak demand periods, in Long Beach, California. Inside the AES Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System, which provides stored renewable energy to supply electricity during peak demand periods, in Long Beach, California. Patrick Fallon/AFP via Getty Images Tax credits help "make the economics work" to start domestic production, he said. Tesla is expanding its Nevada facility to make more battery cells, Snyder said, and investing in a new facility in Houston to produce more Megapacks. Arizona Republican Representative Juan Ciscomani said he joined nearly two dozen other Republican House members on a letter urging party leaders to keep the clean energy tax credits in place as Congress debates a budget proposal with deep spending cuts. "Arizona has seen a substantial amount of investment from different companies taking advantage of those tax credits," Ciscomani said. "It made sense for me to stand up for that." Battery maker Fluence has a facility in Arizona and employees from that company and other battery manufacturers planned to visit lawmakers in a day of lobbying in support of the tax credits. Previous lobbying blitzes brought corporate leaders from a range of industries to Capitol Hill to explain the job growth happening as a result of the tax policy, and the effort appears to be bearing fruit. In addition to the letter from House Republicans, four influential Republican Senators wrote a similar letter of support for keeping clean energy tax credits in place. However, the Trump administration remains opposed. Last week—during Earth Week—Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former gas fracking company executive, bashed the tax credits in an appearance on a Fox Business program. "I think it's a big mistake," Wright said on the program. "That term 'clean energy' is just a marketing term. There's no clean energy; all energy sources involve tradeoffs." Wright was referring to the emissions produced from the manufacturing of batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy components and the mining and refining of critical minerals that go into that equipment. Research shows that Wright's comments are misleading. The amount of pollution associated with the life cycle of renewable energy equipment is tiny compared to the pollution and greenhouse emissions from most fossil fuels. Form Energy Co-founder & CEO Mateo Jaramillo's company is creating jobs deep in the heart of coal country. Jaramillo said at the ACP event that he thinks clean energy, and especially energy storage, is becoming a more bipartisan issue. "It is a large, new U.S. industry that we can have right here," he said. "That crosses a lot of the political spectrum."
