Sheriffs across the U.S. are preparing to help the Trump administration deport illegal immigrants after President-elect Trump takes office, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Trump's incoming border czar, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Tom Homan, is reportedly looking to expand a federal program that grants sheriffs and other law enforcement agencies the authority to utilize ICE powers under a "task force model," according to the Journal.
"You should expect to see a historic number of new 287(g) agreements," said an unnamed person said to be involved in transition planning, referring to the subsection of immigration law that the program is named after.
Sheriff Richard Jones of Butler County, Ohio, told the newspaper that "everything shut down" under the Biden administration concerning immigration enforcement.
"We're going to be in the business again," when Trump takes office, Jones said, noting that he's preparing spaces to hold up to 150 people detained by ICE. "We have space available, and they're going to need space from day one."
Jones also said that he hopes the Trump administration will bring back local ICE offices to help coordinate with local law enforcement.
"We actually had ICE agents that had offices here, and we had hearings with immigration court for deportation," Jones said. "And we still have the setup. We're getting that back reinstated here."
"State and local cooperation is absolutely essential to detain and deport illegal immigrants on a historic scale," RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, said in a statement.
"At the end of the day, the Trump administration is going to want to be empowering sheriffs," Naureen Shah, the deputy director of government affairs for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.