Why Should Delaware Care?
Federal agents’ attempts to try to recruit local Delaware police officers to enforce immigration law were broader than previously known. Lawmakers are considering banning such partnerships just as the Trump administration ramps up deportations.
Federal immigration agents in recent months petitioned at least four local Delaware police departments to partner with them to enforce immigration laws, according to emails obtained by Spotlight Delaware through open records requests, and a conversation with a police chief.
Only one of them – Camden – agreed to a partnership in April, but paused the agreement days later after it became publicly known.
The revelation shows that the federal agency’s outreach to Delaware’s police is broader than previously known, and came as President Donald Trump expanded immigration enforcement across the country.
Last month, the administration called on federal officials to arrest 3,000 people each day.
In emails to Delaware police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials asked Dover, Seaford, Harrington and Camden police if they would volunteer for ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local officers to enforce federal immigration statutes.
ICE officials emailed both Seaford and Harrington police on March 5, but reached out to Camden police nearly two months later, on April 28.
It remains unclear when ICE contacted Dover police, as an open records request with the department is still pending. But the chief of police there told Spotlight Delaware earlier this month that he had been contacted.
The four departments are all connected by a 38-mile stretch of U.S. Route 13, running from Dover to Seaford. The towns surrounding the stretch of highway are home to many immigrants from Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala and other Central American countries.
The ICE request may have gone out to even more local law enforcement agencies. Spotlight Delaware still has 19 open records requests pending with Delaware police departments.
ICE says its 287(g) program enhances collaboration between federal and local agencies in order to identify, arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. The program allows local police, in general, to detain people to ask about their immigration status, and then transfer noncitizens into ICE custody, among other powers.
But critics of the program say it leads to racial profiling by local police and deteriorates trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement.
Those critics include several Delaware lawmakers who have introduced various pieces of legislation in recent months to limit ICE’s operations in the state, including one bill that would prohibit local departments from signing 287(g) agreements.
House Bill 182, introduced by Rep. Mara Gorman (D-Newark) in May, was unanimously voted out of the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. It now awaits consideration in the full house.
“(The bill) ensures that our local officers are not being used to carry out federal civil immigration enforcement — tasks they are not trained for (and) not funded for,” Gorman said during the committee hearing.
Thus far, ICE has signed onto 706 agreements that span 40 states.
A recent one occurred last Tuesday when Miami city commissioners voted to enter a 287(g) agreement despite public pushback.
Police reluctant to partner with ICE
Dover Police Chief Thomas Johnson Jr. quickly decided he wasn’t going to partner with ICE after he received an email from the federal agency.
As a purely practical matter, he doesn’t have enough officers or resources to partner with ICE, even if he wanted to, he said.
“I can’t be in the business of doing immigration enforcement,” Johnson said in an interview with Spotlight Delaware. “I don’t know (any police department) that’s resourced enough to take on that mission.”
Johnson further said that Dover police will continue to focus on violent crime, threats to public safety and people with outstanding warrants.
“I can’t address burglaries, robberies, traffic safety, quality-of-life issues, if we’re running around doing some kind of mission that isn’t our mission,” he said.
“I can’t address burglaries, robberies, traffic safety, quality-of-life issues, if we’re running around doing some kind of mission that isn’t our mission.”
Dover Police Chief Thomas Johnson Jr.
Local police reluctance to partnering with ICE also appeared in March when the Delaware Association of Chiefs of Police reached a consensus that entering into partnerships was not something they should pursue, said Richard McCabe, president of the organization and chief of the New Castle City Police Department.
“However, we also recognized the importance of maintaining strong working relationships with our federal partners,” McCabe said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware.
ICE’s Dover Field Office sits about a mile away from the Dover Police Department and roughly 5 miles from the 4,000-resident town of Camden, which was the only department in Delaware to have partnered — and subsequently backed out of — a 287(g) partnership with ICE.
The agreement became public during a meeting of the town council in early May. A day after the meeting, Camden Police Chief Marcus Whitney told Spotlight Delaware that he backed out of the agreement because of pushback from his Kent County community.
But, weeks later, Spotlight Delaware obtained an email he sent to ICE officials saying he was only placing the partnership “on pause for the time being” — indicating that the department could re-enter the immigration enforcement program.
ICE declined to comment for this story.
ICE emails to police
It was March 5 when an ICE officer in the Dover Field Office sent Seaford Police Chief Marshall Craft an email, asking if he had any interest in “volunteering” for the 287(g) program.
That same day, ICE sent a similar email to Harrington Police Chief Adam Gillespie, asking if the department had interest in volunteering for the program. Harrington sits in Kent County and has a population of just under 4,000 people.
Gillespie then forwarded the email to the Delaware Association of Chiefs of Police to answer the email collectively for Harrington and other police departments in the state.
Law enforcement agencies that are interested in participating must sign a memorandum of agreement with ICE and nominate officers to participate in the program, according to the email obtained by Spotlight Delaware.
The email further says that nominated officers receive training at ICE’s expense.
The rest of the email provides boilerplate details and background on the program.
Shortly after Trump took office in January, his “border czar” Tom Homan spoke to the training element of the program, saying the Trump administration was seeking to reduce the training period to a little over a week – from the previous four weeks.
He also said the administration was trying to apply a legal immunity to local officers.
“We’re also looking at making sure we got full-scale indemnification, so if you get sued the federal government will help you out with that and they’ll defend you,” Homan said to a crowd at the National Sheriffs’ Association winter conference.