Breaking ICE: Most bans on ICE collaboration don’t go far enough. Here’s how to make them stronger

State and local governments play a critical role in the detention and deportation machinery. Here's how advocates can make bans on 287(g) agreements more effective and place additional limits on ICE overreach.

by Aleks Kajstura, October 15, 2026

Advocates are getting states to limit the impact of federal immigrant detention policies. By and large, this has involved targeting the 287(g) program, which allows state and local law enforcement to be trained and certified or deputized to carry out immigration enforcement functions for the federal government. However, more work needs to be done to strengthen protections for communities. Progress made in recent legislative sessions shows what works — and what doesn’t — in efforts to curtail local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents.

Banning 287(g) agreements explicitly is an important tool in an advocate’s toolbox, but can leave many loopholes when treated as a silver bullet. That is because much of the collusion with ICE that is undertaken under 287(g) agreements can be performed under other pretenses or even informally.

Instead, advocates should seek to broaden legislation and executive action in order to avoid playing whack-a-mole as ICE tactics shift. This includes going beyond banning 287(g) agreements specifically to include any collusion with state, local, and other law enforcement agencies, or the use of certain infrastructure, to carry out ICE’s civil immigration work. These broader bans target both the letter and the spirit behind 287(g) agreements.

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This briefing explains how some states — including Maine, Illinois, and most recently, Massachusetts — pursued broad applicability of their bans on immigration enforcement collaboration, including targeting existing and new agreements, protecting sensitive locations (such as jails, schools, and courthouses), prohibiting housing immigration detainees in their jails, and more. We also examine the crucial role that attorneys general and governors can play in addition to legislating bans on collaboration. While this piece focuses on advocacy at the state level, there are related reforms that advocates can pursue at the city or county level as well.

Ultimately, there is a lot of potential for reform because state governments have indirect control over some federal incarceration. State and local governments control carceral facilities, law enforcement agencies, and a slew of other infrastructure that ICE relies on to conduct federal actions. That gives advocates leverage to oppose the troubling expansion of ICE detention.

Through this guide to recent law changes in several states, we hope to give advocates a roadmap for how to craft successful legislation and executive action in their state that does more than pay lip-service to banning local law enforcement collaboration with ICE, and produces real results.

Commonalities in successful legislation

There are a few provisions that make limits on ICE more effective: making the ban on collaboration applicable to a wide variety of agencies, ensuring that existing agreements are terminated or rendered unenforceable, and prohibiting civil immigration enforcement around sensitive locations, such as schools, courthouses, or hospitals.

Broad applicability

Legislation is most effective when it broadly defines the law enforcement agencies that it applies to. Each state has a variety of law enforcement agencies, and some may be more obvious than others. ICE already launders requests through multiple agencies to circumvent bans on collusion. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all types of law enforcement are covered so that ICE doesn’t simply go down the list of agencies until they find one that is willing to cooperate. Sufficiently broad legislation is not limited to state governments, but also includes local police departments, private university campus police, and often other government agencies involved in the criminal legal system, such as prosecutors.

For example, here are the definitions from Maine and Massachusetts:

Maine:

• “Law enforcement agency” means an agency in the State, including an employee or agent of the agency, charged with enforcement of state, county or municipal laws or with managing custody of detained persons in the State and includes but is not limited to municipal police departments, sheriff’s departments, the State Police, a university or college campus police department, safety department or the equivalent, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Safety.

Massachusetts:

• “Law enforcement agency”, (i) a state, county, municipal or district law enforcement agency, including, but not limited to: (A) a city, town or district police department; (B) the office of environmental law enforcement; (C) the University of Massachusetts police department; (D) the department of the state police; (E) the Massachusetts Port Authority police department, also known as the Port of Boston Authority police department; and (F) the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police department; (ii) a sheriff’s department in its performance of police duties and functions; (iii) a public or private college, university or other educational institution or hospital police department; (iv) a federal law enforcement agency; or (v) a humane society police department.

The bar on types of collusion needs to be equally broad. Although New Jersey passed otherwise-broad bills, one of the new statutes contained carveouts for anyone charged with any one of a long list of offenses. Simply charging someone with one of these crimes — no conviction necessary — is enough to exempt law enforcement from the ban on information sharing. As a result, police and prosecutors can easily identify loopholes for collusion that are large enough to nullify the new protections against ICE.

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Similarly, the bans need to address not only 287(g) agreements specifically, but any actions typically taken under such agreements. Maine’s legislation is a good example of this; it functionally bans 287(g) agreements, but does so by prohibiting a broad range of activities or use of public funds for immigration enforcement. That approach bans many kinds of activities beyond those that would fall under a 287(g) agreement. As a result, law enforcement is prohibited from engaging in even informal collusion. In contrast, banning the agreements by name unnecessarily narrows the reforms that advocates seek.

Prohibiting new agreements while nullifying existing ones

Many agencies (covering 77.2 million people or 32% of the country) have existing 287(g) agreements already in place, so it’s not enough to only ban agencies from entering into new agreements. Ideally, agreements already in place should be nullified immediately, but at the very least legislation should impose a tight deadline for termination.

Over the objections of advocates, Massachusetts’ anti-ICE collaboration law grandfathered in agreements between ICE and Massachusetts’ prisons, while banning collaboration from jails and other law enforcement agencies. When grandfathering in the Department of Corrections’ agreement, legislators argued that allowing some collaboration might deter ICE from conducting as many community sweeps. However, our recent analysis of ICE arrest data shows collaboration has not been a deterrent at all: states like New Jersey, which have tried to compromise between protections and collusion, ended up having arrest rates comparable to that of enthusiastic collaborators like Georgia. Conversely, states that refused ICE collaboration have suppressed arrest rates.

Protecting certain locations

It’s important that everyone feels they can safely go to school, attend their court dates, and seek medical attention. These are all activities that benefit not only the individual but the community and society at large. However, ICE sweeps and targeted actions at such locations undermine public safety — a fact that used to guide federal policy prohibiting ICE enforcement in these places.

In order to restore public trust in important social institutions, many states bar immigration enforcement in and around “sensitive locations,” such as courthouses, schools, or hospitals. Advocates should take full advantage of states’ jurisdiction over public spaces in order to impose some geographic limits on ICE. Restoring these common-sense limits on ICE offers an additional layer of protection that advocates fighting to limit ICE encroachment to communities should seek to add.

Restricting access to detention infrastructure

Preventing ICE from using state and local lockups to house detained immigrants is another crucial way to slow down the mass deportation machine. Even though ICE has a multibillion-dollar budget rivaling that of most nations’ militaries, they nonetheless lack a nationwide network of detention centers and jailers.

In addition to renting bed space to ICE, state and local facilities voluntarily hold people who are already in police custody until ICE can come take them. As detailed in our recent briefing on ICE arrest data, the average number of daily detainer-related arrests more than doubled since the last presidential administration, growing by 144% from 2024 to 2026. Fortunately, state and local governments have the power to put a stop to this practice, known as “detainers.”

Our analysis found that since 2025, states that prevented local law enforcement from complying with detainers saw fewer ICE arrests overall. For example, in Oregon, only a small number of ICE arrests involved law enforcement, and the rare detainer arrest was usually connected to the U.S. Marshals or Federal Bureau of Prison facilities.¹

States can strengthen these protections further by not just banning collaboration with ICE, but with other federal law enforcement agencies that have been deputized into the mass deportation agenda. ICE uses other federal agencies as stand-ins to circumvent facility bans on ICE detainees. Under this strategy, ICE and other federal agencies refer people for federal prosecution for immigration-related “crimes,”² moving them into the custody of the U.S. Marshals and thus enabling them to use contracted local jails where ICE itself is prohibited from doing so. Once those people are finished with their sentence or the prosecution is dropped, they are brought back into ICE custody. While no state law can prevent federal agencies from working together, states can prevent federal agencies from using local jails in their chain of custody.

Advocating for reform through the executive branch

Advocates should look beyond legislative reforms and push for action in the executive branch as well. Governors and attorneys general can play an effective role in curbing ICE overreach. Although narrower in scope, executive action is a good alternative if legislation is unattainable. Executive action can also move faster and is therefore useful as a stopgap measure until legislation is passed.

Attorneys General

Attorneys general are states’ top lawyers. An attorney general provides guidance to agencies tasked with implementing laws in a legal landscape that is constantly shifting in response to evolving ICE tactics. Attorneys general can therefore be a key force in curtailing ICE collaboration even without legislation.

Sometimes state laws unrelated to immigration already prohibit 287(g) agreements, and attorneys general serve an important role in highlighting their applicability for state and local police who attempt to work with ICE in ways that are inconsistent with state law. The Maryland attorney general explained the risks of constitutional violations when collaborating with ICE and highlighted ICE tactics designed to fool local law enforcement into unwitting collaboration, pointing out, for example, ICE’s habit of labeling someone as a “fugitive” even when the person is not wanted for any crime. Although the state now has legislation that explicitly bans collusion with ICE, this part of the guidance predates the recent legislative reforms in the state.

Beyond risking constitutional violations, collaboration with ICE can have mundane legal consequences, too. When local police collaborate with ICE, even insurance companies are wary of covering the increased liabilities.

Local governments rely on attorney general guidance, so attorney general involvement can have a big impact on local action. Therefore, it’s important that advocates not overlook their role in guiding local agency behavior — for better or worse. South Carolina exemplifies the impact that an attorney general can have; that state’s attorney general encouragedparticipation in ICE agreements, resulting in a jump from 3 to 15 agreements in just a few months.

Governors

Executive orders, such as those issued by governors in Virginia and Massachusetts (pre-dating the recent legislation in those states), can take the place of legislation in a pinch, but are narrowly applicable. Executive orders can only directly address things under the control of the executive branch of the state, such as state police and state-owned lands; that means city and county agencies are often out of reach of a governor’s unilateral actions.

Executive orders can also be used to ensure that the laws passed by the legislature are effective. For example, the Illinois governor issued an order creating an accountability commission tasked with documenting ICE activity in the wake of legislative reforms in order to identify any further changes needed to curb federal overreach.

Conclusion

ICE is taking advantage of state and local resources to fuel the federal crimmigration agenda. But advocates can harness states’ power to limit ICE’s overreach and keep incarceration policies under state and local control. While there are many approaches, advocates should strive for broad legislation to stop ICE from exploiting common loopholes. Advocating for legislation while simultaneously seeking gubernatorial and attorney general action leads to the quickest and most comprehensive results, putting the brakes on ICE as quickly and effectively as possible.