Why Should Delaware Care?
Federal immigration enforcement in Delaware has quietly ramped up in the first four months of the year, with criminal charges for unauthorized reentry skyrocketing in 2025. Despite receiving little attention, the escalation showcases the promises of deportation crackdowns on which President Donald Trump retook the White House.
Police in Camden, Delaware, withdrew from an agreement Tuesday to partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents because of what the chief of police said was pushback from the community.
The decision to withdraw comes just one week after the department had signed on to the ICE partnership, which had deputized local officers to enforce immigration laws.
For that brief amount of time, the small Camden Police Department was the only law enforcement agency in Delaware to have formally partnered with ICE, according to a database of local police departments that had signed such agreements.
The partnership had cleared the way for local officers to act with “limited immigration authority” during their routine duties, according to information on ICE’s website. ICE would provide oversight of those operations, according to the agency.
On Tuesday afternoon, hours after Spotlight Delaware published a story about the partnership, Camden Police Chief Marcus Whitney said in a voicemail message that the department had separated from the agreement with ICE, earlier that day.
Whitney said the decision came in response to community concerns. He noted that he had received numerous calls on Tuesday from people opposing the move.
Whitney also said the agreement had been done with “good intentions” and with the aim of focusing on people who already had faced a criminal complaint.
“It wasn’t done as a way to go around and round people up,” he said.
Whitney could not be reached for further comment Tuesday, following his voicemail to Spotlight Delaware.
Camden’s mayor, Larry Dougherty Sr., did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The town of about 4,000 residents sits in Kent County, south of Dover, and less than five miles from ICE’s Dover Field Office.
The outcry
Among those who spoke out against Camden’s agreement with ICE was the ACLU of Delaware, which claimed in a press release on Tuesday morning that such police partnerships lead to racial profiling and undermine public safety by “pitting” local law enforcement against immigrant communities.
“Immigrants are a vital part of our communities, and these agreements only serve to directly support the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans,” ACLU of Delaware Executive Director Mike Brickner said in a press release.
Camden’s agreement was made under ICE’s 287(g) program, which allows the federal agency to delegate certain immigration duties to state and local law enforcement. The program became law in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, describes the 287(g) program as one that allows local police, in general, to ask people about their immigration status, and transfer noncitizens into ICE custody, among other powers.
The Miami Herald reported in March that the 287(g) task force model — which Camden was a part of — allows local “officers to challenge people on the street about their immigration status.”
ICE says the program “enhances the safety and security of our nation’s communities” by allowing the agency to partner with state and local law enforcement in order to identify, arrest and deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
The number of police departments across the United States involved in the 287(g) program more than doubled during the first three months of the second Trump administration, according to reporting from The Markup.
As of Monday, ICE has signed 517 Memorandums of Agreement for 287(g) programs covering 39 states, according to the agency.
While Camden had been the only Delaware law enforcement agency to have signed a 287(g) agreement, Delaware State Police does communicate with ICE when a suspected undocumented immigrant poses a “potential threat to public safety,” a DSP spokesperson told Spotlight Delaware last week.
During the first three months of President Donald Trump’s current term, federal authorities engaged in an immigration crackdown in Delaware.
A Spotlight Delaware analysis of unsealed court records showed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware has criminally charged at least 32 people during that period with re-entering the country without authorization after previously being deported.
Last year, Delaware’s federal prosecutor had charged had only four people.
