Clarisse McClellan's Daughter

Posted by by Nicole Santa Cruz, ProPublica, and Dave Biscobing, ABC15 Arizona

https://www.propublica.org/article/maricopa-county-death-penalty-arizona

by Nicole Santa Cruz, ProPublica, and Dave Biscobing, ABC15 Arizona

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Watch ABC15 Arizona's series "Seeking Death," based on our joint investigation into Maricopa County's handling of death penalty cases.

In 2010, Vikki Valencia’s 24-year-old brother, Triny Rey Lozano, died in an almost unimaginably brutal way. He was shot in the head multiple times, dumped on a remote road outside Phoenix and set on fire.

Valencia saw only one way prosecutors could bring her family justice: The killer should get the death penalty.

Maricopa County prosecutors built a capital murder case against the man they say killed Lozano, Victor Hernandez.

Valencia knew it would take a long time but believed it would be worth it. Over nearly 10 years, she visited the courthouse hundreds of times, frequently missing work to attend hearings where she revisited traumatic images of the crime scene.

“The death penalty was the thing that we wanted most because we thought it was going to give us justice,” she said in a recent interview.

During jury selection, the case stalled because of a potential conflict of interest involving a prosecutor who had previously represented Hernandez. Years later, a second trial followed. As that jury was deliberating, prosecutors dropped the death penalty. Nine years after he was charged with killing Lozano, Hernandez was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Although the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has historically pursued the death penalty at high rates, its efforts rarely result in a death sentence.

ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona reviewed nearly 350 cases over a 20-year period in which Maricopa County prosecutors decided the crimes warranted the death penalty, and found that 13% ended in a death sentence. In most of the cases, defendants either pleaded guilty and received a lesser sentence or prosecutors changed course, ending their pursuit of the death penalty.

In 76 trials in which Maricopa County juries deliberated a death sentence, 41, or 54%, yielded one.

By comparison, an analysis of death penalty cases initiated in Harris County, Texas, from 2004 through 2023, found prosecutors took fewer cases, 24, to trial and were more successful, obtaining a death sentence 75% of the time, according to figures provided by a local advocacy group. Data over a longer time period also shows that federal prosecutors nationwide have obtained death sentences at a higher rate than in Maricopa County, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project.

Pursuing the death penalty is among the most consequential decisions that prosecutors make. Each case can be litigated across the tenures of multiple county attorneys and can cost more than a million dollars. In the hundreds of Maricopa County death penalty cases that prosecutors have pursued since 2007, the cost of furnishing the accused with an adequate defense has totaled $289 million. But the outcomes in the county raise questions about the office’s judgment in its pursuit of the ultimate punishment, according to court records and interviews with more than three dozen people including lawyers, former prosecutors, family members of victims and defendants, jurors and experts.

Former County Attorney Rick Romley said there should be a review of capital charging decisions after ProPublica and ABC15 shared the newsrooms’ findings with him. Romley wondered whether prosecutors are seeking death “in the appropriate cases.”

“The jury is kind of a barometer of whether or not you’re doing a good job,” he said. “And quite frankly … if it was a school grade, that’s called an F.”

The office, now headed by Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, declined our request for an interview. A spokesperson responded to written questions, emphasizing that “only one” person in Maricopa County — Mitchell — makes the decision to seek the death penalty and that each case is reviewed throughout the process, as information changes.

Maricopa County’s and the state of Arizona’s handling of the death penalty have been questioned for years. A 2016 report by the now-defunct Fair Punishment Project, a legal and educational research group at Harvard University, cited the county, among other places, as having a history of “overzealous prosecutors, inadequate defense and a pattern of racial bias and exclusion.”

In addition, defense attorneys for a death row prisoner in 2018 petitioned unsuccessfully to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that Arizona’s statute was overly broad because almost every murder can be charged as a capital case. And two former prosecutors and appeals court judges wrote in a 2022 law journal article that state officials, rather than individual counties, should make all death penalty decisions to ensure the process is “less arbitrary.”

Maricopa County prosecutors’ handling of death penalty cases is newly relevant as Arizona has resumed executions after a two-year pause. The state, which has 111 people on death row, halted executions in 2014, after Joseph Wood was injected repeatedly over two hours, gasping more than 600 times before dying, according to a reporter’s account. The state executed three people in 2022 but paused after the newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of the lethal injection process. Hobbs dismissed the retired federal magistrate she had appointed to conduct the review after he concluded there is no humane way to execute people.

Valencia and her family felt the case had put their lives on hold. Looking back, she said it seemed odd that the prosecution, which had pursued death for so long, decided not to once the outcome was close. (Prosecutors declined to comment on the case.)

But as Valencia learned, there’s little transparency around the process in Maricopa County. Although the final decision to seek death is made by the county attorney, each case is vetted by a little known panel, the Capital Review Committee. The county attorney’s office refused to disclose to ProPublica and ABC15 who sits on the panel, how they vote on the cases being considered for the death penalty or even which cases they review.

The office said in a statement that the process ends not with the county attorney’s office but with a trial, which is “all done in public, in an open courtroom.” The office also said that it is successful in prosecuting capital cases and comparisons to Harris County could be misleading because they ignore the “details and intricacies of individual cases.”

Establishing a committee is generally better than individual judgments, but the quality of the decisions depends on the individuals involved, said Robert Dunham, former director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that shares data and analysis on capital punishment and frequently highlights issues with the system.

“Anyone who says that they have a fair process and is unwilling to say what that process is, is somebody who doesn’t have a fair process,” Dunham said.

Vikki Valencia and her family waited nearly nine years for her brother’s killer to be convicted. Near the end, prosecutors stopped seeking the death penalty. (Ash Ponders for ProPublica) “I Have to Run It by The Man”

When Romley, a Republican, was first elected Maricopa County attorney in 1989, deputy prosecutors in one of the nation’s largest counties decided whether to seek the death penalty on their own.

Among the first changes Romley made was to foster more deliberation. He created the Capital Review Committee to evaluate cases and recommend whether to pursue the death penalty. He still had the final say, but he believed that a group of veteran prosecutors would apply the law more consistently and recommend only cases that warranted the ultimate punishment.

“Seeking the death penalty is a momentous decision that you’ve got to make,” Romley said. “I wanted to make sure that we were ferreting out all the facts, that we made sure that judgment wasn’t being skewed by personal biases.”

Romley served four terms and decided not to seek a fifth, leaving office in 2004. His successor was Andrew Thomas, a Republican attorney and author, who ran as a law-and-order conservative vowing to crack down on illegal immigration and impose tougher sentences. After two years, Thomas had nearly doubled the number of death penalty prosecutions, earning Maricopa County the distinction of seeking death more than almost any other jurisdiction in the nation.

Critics said Thomas sought the death penalty for crimes that didn’t warrant it — including a case of vehicular homicide. The defendant in that case, David Szymanski, had a blood-alcohol content nearly twice the legal limit and cocaine in his system when he drove the wrong way on a freeway and killed a 22-year-old man.

A police review found that officers had violated department policy while pursuing Szymanski. Thomas relented more than a year later, and the Capital Review Committee recommended the capital charge be withdrawn. Szymanski pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

The victim’s mother told the Arizona Republic, “We’ve never wanted the death penalty.”

Kenneth Everett, who was a defense attorney on capital cases for the Maricopa County Office of the Legal Advocate during Thomas’ tenure, told the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal in 2010 that it was clear decisions on the cases were made solely by Thomas. “When I begged for a deal, all of the prosecutors would say, ‘I have to run it by the man,’” he said. “Thomas certainly had the ultimate power. And if he said no, you were going to trial. And he usually said no.”

The Arizona Supreme Court convened a task force to address case delays amid a shortage of qualified capital defense attorneys.

Thomas responded to criticism of the delays by blaming defense attorneys for drawing out proceedings and the courts for failing to enforce speedy trial rules. He wrote in an Arizona Republic opinion piece, “I’ve sought the death penalty in appropriate cases knowing juries make the ultimate decision and believing they should have this option.”

Thomas won a second term but resigned in 2010 to pursue an unsuccessful bid for state attorney general. He was later disbarred for misconduct and political prosecutions of county officials. Thomas, who did not respond to requests for comment, said at the time that he was “working to fight corruption.”

After Thomas’ resignation, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Romley to serve out the term. Back in his old job, Romley reviewed the 120 capital cases the office was pursuing at the time. He decided not to seek the death penalty in 11 of them, including a case in which a 4-month-old child was found dead at an in-home day care. The medical examiner had concluded the child died of blunt force trauma, but Romley said he brought in medical experts who disputed that and found the injuries the child suffered could have been caused by an illness.

In court minutes of a hearing to drop the death penalty in the case, the Capital Review Committee is noted as having voted 8-0 to dismiss the case, which was never refiled. But the weight of the charge on the defendant, Lisa Randall, is evident in court documents. Over the three years she was in and out of jail, her marriage fell apart and she lost her house, according to court documents. Randall couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Once you allege death, the whole game changes,” Romley said. “So many more resources go into that particular case.”

Former County Attorney Rick Romley created the Capital Review Committee in the early 1990s to evaluate potential death penalty cases. (Gerard Watson/ABC15) “They Should Show Some of the Bravery That They Expect Us to Show”

Once a prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty, the stakes rise. The courts and victims’ families face a lengthier process, and jurors can face intense scrutiny.

The court appoints two defense lawyers, along with an investigator and a mitigation specialist. (In other cases, defendants have only one lawyer.) The defense is also given more time to prepare, to allow for an examination of the defendant’s background to find sympathetic factors that could mitigate a death sentence.

Capital trials consume more time because they consist of three parts: A jury first decides if the defendant is guilty; then jurors consider aggravating circumstances that could make the defendant eligible or ineligible for a death sentence. Finally, the jury decides if the sentence should be death or life in prison.

It’s unclear how much the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office spends prosecuting capital cases. When ProPublica and ABC15 asked the office for a breakdown, a spokesperson said that the office doesn’t track spending on death penalty cases.

But since 2007, the county has spent nearly $289 million on defense for capital cases. Last year, the county spent $26 million, more than any year since 2007, according to the Maricopa County Office of Public Defense Services.

In Oklahoma, a study released in 2017 found that capital cases cost, on average, three times more than noncapital cases.

Jodi Arias made headlines in 2013 when she was convicted of killing her ex-boyfriend. Prosecutors sought the death penalty twice, and jurors deadlocked both times. Arias was ultimately sentenced to life in prison. The two trials cost $3.2 million, including the defense and prosecution, according to officials at the time.

During the 20 years examined by ProPublica and ABC15, juries in 35 cases either voted for life, deadlocked, determined the cases didn’t qualify for death or found the defendant not guilty. In 41 cases, jurors recommended the death penalty.

Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina political science professor, was surprised Maricopa County juries disagreed with prosecutors 46% of the time in capital cases. Prosecutors would save taxpayers money by exercising more discretion over which cases they pursue, Baumgartner said. They also appear to be out of step with public opinion in the county, given that juries disagree with them so frequently on the death penalty. “They’re not in sync with their local community,” he said.

People who served on capital juries in the county told ProPublica and ABC15 that they had traumatic experiences. During the selection process, potential jurors are asked personal questions in open court, making them feel vulnerable. Some have had their identities revealed by jurors who disagree with them.

A juror in a high-profile Maricopa County murder case who asked not to be named because of safety concerns called the experience “one of the worst of my life.” Once the juror learned it was a death penalty case, the stress triggered intense stomach pain. “It’s the highest penalty in the land, and I don’t think that it should be applied lightly,” the former juror said.

Given what jurors go though, prosecutors should be transparent about their decision-making, the juror said.

“They should show some of the bravery that they expect us to show,” the former juror said of the secretive committee. “You ask us to do this, to put our life on hold, to go through this, not share it with anybody. Then show some of the bravery that you hold us to, and be accountable like we would be accountable if we were caught not following any of the rules.”

In 2019, Myla Fairchild served as a juror in a case against the man accused of murdering Gilbert police Lt. Eric Shuhandler, who was killed after pulling over a pickup truck. Christopher Redondo, a passenger in the truck, shot Shuhandler in the face, setting off a 50-mile chase, prosecutors said. Fairchild said she voted against the death penalty because of Redondo’s mental capacity and long history of mental illness. Redondo was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Afterwards, frustrated jurors told the media Fairchild’s name.

She wasn’t afforded the same privacy as the prosecutors on the review committee who recommended the death penalty in the first place, she said.

“You’re not protected,” she said.

The Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix where capital cases are tried (Gerard Watson/ABC15) “A Total Disservice”

ProPublica and ABC15 asked the largest prosecutorial offices in Arizona and across the nation how they decide whether to seek the death penalty. The newsrooms found that no two counties handle decision-making the same way, but Maricopa County is an outlier for obscuring nearly every aspect of its committee’s work.

The ACLU sued the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in 2019 for access to the committee’s membership and other records. Jared Keenan, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s legal director, said the organization considered the records important to the public’s understanding of the death penalty.

“Prosecuting agencies have an incredible amount of power, and that power is at its height when they make life-and-death decisions,” Keenan said. “The public needs to know who is involved in making those decisions to be able to ensure that those decisions are made responsibly, constitutionally, ethically.”

The county opposed releasing the information. “They were fighting to keep this specific information from the public for years and years,” Keenan said. A judge did not order the county to release the committee records to the public.

At ProPublica and ABC15’s request, the county attorney’s office shared a policy document listing the composition of the Capital Review Committee but said the document is “significantly out of date.” It listed as committee members: the deputy chief of the Criminal Division; the division chiefs from the Capital Litigation Bureau, Major Offenders Division and Special Victims Division; and the Community Based Prosecution Division chiefs. The policy allows the county attorney to designate other committee members.

In a statement, the county attorney’s office reiterated that Mitchell makes the final decision after considering a wide range of information.

Still, the decision can feel opaque to victims’ family members.

Sherry Spooney visits the graves of her relatives in Phoenix. Spooney wondered why prosecutors sought the death penalty for their mother in the 2016 killings of the children. (Ash Ponders for ProPublica)

When prosecutors sought the death penalty against Octavia Rogers in the killing of her three young children in the summer of 2016, they went against the family’s wishes, according to Rogers’ aunt, Sherry Spooney. Spooney and her family had lost three young relatives in the killing and didn’t want to lose Rogers to the death penalty, too. “What would it solve? How would it help the situation?” she said.

Prosecutors never spoke to the family about how they arrived at their decision, Spooney said.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said it reached out to the family.

Spooney called their secrecy “disheartening” and said it caused her to wonder if the office had its own agenda in pursuing the death penalty. “It’s a total disservice, to not just the family, but the victims of the family. And in this case, we’re both, we’re one and the same, and if they’re going to make decisions for someone else, it should be known.”

Last year, after Rogers was found incompetent to stand trial, she pleaded “guilty except insane,” meaning she did not know at the time of her crime that the act was wrong. Rogers is being held at the Arizona State Hospital.

Valencia recalled that when the case against her brother’s killer was delayed, she initially blamed defense attorneys for dragging out the proceedings, but the committee’s secrecy was also contributing to the delay. Attorneys for Hernandez, the defendant, had discovered a member of the Capital Review Committee had a potential conflict of interest: A former defense attorney for Hernandez in an unrelated case had since become a prosecutor and was on the committee that voted to reject a plea deal for Hernandez. (The plea deal included the noncapital case as well.)

Prosecutors fought for nearly three years to keep the committee’s membership and its votes secret in a case that reached the Arizona Supreme Court. A judge eventually determined there was no conflict of interest in the Hernandez case.

Years later, when prosecutors withdrew the death penalty charge against Hernandez, Valencia said she agreed with the decision even though she’d once thought it would be the only just outcome.

“It took such a toll on our family, at that point, I was just ready for it to be done,” she said.

https://www.propublica.org/article/maricopa-county-death-penalty-arizona

Posted by by Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor

https://www.propublica.org/article/north-dakota-ethics-commission-enforcement-authority

by Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

Ever since North Dakota voters created an ethics watchdog agency seven years ago, dubious lawmakers have pushed back against giving it power to actually keep an eye on state officials.

That was true in the session that just ended, as legislators shut down many requests from the Ethics Commission, keeping the agency on a modest budget and rebuffing measures that would have given it more latitude in its investigations.

The offices of the governor and attorney general also argued during the session that the state constitution does not permit the commission to create or impose penalties for ethics-related violations.

“I was hopeful that the tide was turning,” said Rep. Karla Rose Hanson, a Democrat from Fargo and member of the Appropriations Committee, which worked on the commission’s budget. “But my general perspective is that the legislative body as a whole, specifically the majority party, is very hostile to the Ethics Commission and their work.”

North Dakotans, fed up with what they saw as ethical lapses by public officials, voted in 2018 to amend the state constitution and create the Ethics Commission. The amendment set rules for public officials and empowered the commission to both create more rules and investigate alleged violations related to corruption, elections, lobbying and transparency.

North Dakota was one of the last states to establish an ethics agency and since then, the commission has struggled to fulfill its mission, the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica reported this year. The amendment left some ambiguity about the commission’s role and whether it can enforce ethics laws, leading to ongoing disagreements about how it operates.

State leaders’ actions this year further hamstrung the agency at a time when public officials across the country have been working, in various ways, to reverse or rein in policies created through citizen-led ballot initiatives, including those related to abortion and employee benefits.

Danielle Caputo of the national nonprofit Campaign Legal Center said several state governments have worked to undermine ethics initiatives in particular. North Dakota leaders’ assertions this year that the ethics agency cannot punish officials for wrongdoing is another example of that, she said.

“We have seen what appears to be a concerted effort in those states to overturn ballot initiatives or to twist their language in a way that’s most beneficial to those who want less enforcement,” said Caputo, whose organization has studied the issue. She said North Dakota is “one of the more egregious examples of that that I’ve seen.”

In an email to the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, the governor’s office called Caputo’s take a “gross mischaracterization” and said the governor does not oppose the Ethics Commission. In a separate email, Chief Deputy Attorney General Claire Ness called the notion that the attorney general’s office is undermining the intent of voters “unimaginable.”

As government officials debate the commission’s authority, North Dakotans have reported more concerns about ethics violations to the agency this year than in any other. The commission as of late May had received 72 complaints this year. There were 41 complaints filed in all of 2024.

By the end of last month, the commission had 63 pending complaints, some of which date back to 2022. The agency — which has three full-time staff members and five commissioners who receive a small stipend to oversee the work — has yet to disclose whether it has substantiated a complaint. (State law requires that the commission keep complaints confidential until the end of the process, so little is known about the nature of the filings.)

The Ethics Commission supported legislation this session that it said would have overhauled its process to speed up investigations and allow it to close cases sooner.

Under the measure, sponsored by eight Republicans and two Democrats, the commission would have been able to settle and dismiss complaints at any time instead of at only certain stages in the complaint process. It also would have been allowed to investigate alleged ethics violations without someone filing an official complaint. The agency currently cannot investigate some North Dakotans’ tips because they must be submitted as formal complaints, which some complainants are uncomfortable doing, agency staff have said.

Staff from the offices of Gov. Kelly Armstrong and Attorney General Drew Wrigley, both Republicans, testified against the bill because they said it would have given the commission too much power.

Faced with strong opposition from state leaders and their own reluctance to give the agency more authority, the House voted overwhelmingly to reject the legislation. Most of the House sponsors voted against it.

Rep. Austen Schauer, a West Fargo Republican who chaired the committee that worked on the legislation, acknowledged tension between the Ethics Commission and the legislature and oppositional testimony from the executive branch.

“The bill was basically DOA, and we just had to move on,” Schauer said.

Lawmakers instead settled on tweaks to the existing process; one requires the commission to develop time management standards and another allows it to informally settle ethics complaints with the accused. Those settlements would only be made public if all parties to the agreement consent.

“There’s people that for years have been sitting with this complaint over their head, which is absolutely unfair,” said Rep. Mike Nathe, a Bismarck Republican who has criticized the commission and proposed some of the changes. He also said he thinks the commission’s caseload includes fake complaints submitted by North Dakotans who want to “weaponize” the system against their political opponents. (Because state law requires that the commission keep complaints confidential, this claim cannot be verified.)

Rebecca Binstock, the Ethics Commission’s executive director, said the agency will look for ways to work around the hurdles that continue to slow down the investigation process. “The Commission must now consider how to fix the process absent legislation,” Binstock wrote in an email.

Rebecca Binstock, executive director of the North Dakota Ethics Commission, said the agency will seek ways to overcome hurdles slowing its work without legislation. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

The legislature also approved a measure that protects its members from prosecution for voting on something that would provide them with a financial benefit as long as they disclose their conflicts.

Lawmakers, some of whom said they want to keep the commission small out of consideration to taxpayers, also turned down the agency’s request for $250,000 over the next two years for a fourth staff member who would conduct training and education for the public. That would have allowed current employees to spend more time investigating complaints, agency staff said.

“I don’t recall a discussion with the public being, ‘We’re gonna have a multimillion-dollar branch of government,’” Rep. Scott Louser, a Minot Republican, said during a legislative hearing in April.

State leaders also argued the legislature is the only entity that can create penalties for ethics violations and delegate enforcement of those penalties to state agencies. The commission can only punish officials for wrongdoing if the legislature gives it that authority, they said.

Chris Joseph, the governor’s general counsel, testified this year that if the commission were given the power to both create and enforce penalties, it would be “defining, executing and interpreting its own rules” without oversight from other parts of state government.

The commission, however, says its enforcement authority is implicit in the constitutional amendment. That interpretation could soon be tested. Binstock indicated in an email that commission staff members have wrapped up investigating several cases and are waiting on commissioners to take action, which could include imposing penalties.

Ellen Chaffee, part of a group called the Badass Grandmas that organized the ballot initiative and drafted the amendment, said voters intended for the Ethics Commission to impose punishments for wrongdoing.

“The people who worked on the amendment had understood that the only way to have unbiased follow-up on any violations of ethics rules was for the Ethics Commission to have that responsibility,” she said.

Mike Nowatzki, the governor’s spokesperson, said if the amendment does not reflect what the advocates wanted, “they can always seek to clarify it with another constitutional amendment.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/north-dakota-ethics-commission-enforcement-authority

Posted by by Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria, and Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-deportation-police-287g-program-expansion

by Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria, and Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, U.S. immigration officials have deputized a record number of local police to function as deportation agents, despite repeated warnings from government watchdogs since 2018 that the program does not adequately train and oversee officers.

This expansion of the 287(g) Program is being driven by the administration’s resurrection of a previously abandoned task force model empowering local officers to question individuals’ immigration status during traffic stops and other routine policing. At least 315 departments have signed on to the more aggressive approach, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned in 2012 amid racial profiling problems and lawsuits.

Overall, ICE initiated 514 new agreements with local law enforcement agencies across 40 states since January. Among the new partners are highway patrol troopers in Tennessee and officers with about 20 Florida agencies, who in recent weeks assisted ICE with the arrest of more than 1,300 people.

“It has been wonderful to see people jump in and be a part of it to make sure that we have not just the authorities that we need to go out there and to work, but also to have the local knowledge and the people in the community that really want to be a part of the solution,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.

ICE officials tout the expansion of the 287(g) Program — named for the section of law that allows the delegation of limited powers to local officers — as a “force multiplier” to accelerate deportations and counter sanctuary policies that limit local cooperation with immigration agents.

But civil liberties experts and immigrant advocates warn such agreements come at a high cost to communities. Bringing on local partners at such a fast pace compounds the concerns, voiced by ICE’s own internal watchdog, that the agency is unable to adequately train and supervise local officers to execute often complex immigration laws. Advocates say police are more likely to engage in racial profiling under these agreements, damaging community trust in local law enforcement.

“Local law enforcement in these jurisdictions have more authority to enforce immigration laws, but they don’t necessarily know just by looking at someone walking down the street or pulling someone over whether they’re an immigrant or not,” said Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University who has tracked the 287(g) Program for 15 years. “There are a lot of people in this country who are going to be affected by this expanded police power, maybe even who aren’t immigrants, but who might get caught up in the system just because police think they’re an immigrant or because they’re conducting enforcement operations in places that affect U.S. citizens.”

As of June 6, local and state police departments had signed 649 agreements to participate in the program, compared to the 135 agreements that were in place in January, according to ICE. An additional 79 applications were pending. A local police or sheriff’s department may have multiple agreements with ICE.

Over several days last month, the Tennessee Highway Patrol sent a surge of cruisers along the streets of south Nashville, pulling over drivers as ICE agents in unmarked vehicles with flashing lights waited next to them. They quickly drew the attention of passersby and activists who recorded video of the arrests.

Local leaders and immigrant advocates alleged the operation violated the civil rights of Nashville residents, noting it focused on areas where Latino immigrants live and involved far more traffic stops in a few hours than officers would typically do in an entire day.

A majority of the 196 people arrested did not have prior criminal records, according to information released by ICE. The agency said 95 had criminal convictions or pending charges. Thirty-one had committed a felony by reentering the country illegally after being previously deported.

“What’s clear today is that people who do not share our values of safety and community have the authority to cause deep community harm,” Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell said. O’Connell pressed ICE to release the names of everyone who had been arrested, prompting House Republicans to launch two congressional investigations into the mayor for allegedly creating a chilling effect on ICE’s work in the city.

Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said the action traumatized immigrant families. “This operation — which was focused on a neighborhood with an established, vibrant immigrant population — reeks of racial profiling and unconstitutional discrimination,” said Sherman Luna, who fled Guatemala to the U.S. with her family following the kidnapping of her sister. Nashville and Davidson County governments, along with community nonprofits, launched a fund to provide emergency support for immigrants “during moments of crisis.”

But federal officials defended the operation and lambasted critics. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a news release, “You would think all public officials would unite around DHS bringing violent criminal illegal aliens to justice and removing them from American communities. However, pro-open borders politicians — like Mayor O’Connell — would rather protect illegal aliens than American citizens.” DHS had included Nashville in a now-deleted list titled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions Defying Federal Immigration Law.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detain a man stopped by Tennessee Highway Patrol at a gas station in south Nashville, Tennessee, in May. The state agency is among the latest to sign a cooperation agreement with ICE. (Seth Herald/Reuters)

It’s unclear how many immigration-related arrests can be attributed to the 287(g) Program since Trump took office. ICE officials did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica’s request for those numbers. The agency issues monthly reports that selectively highlight arrests for violent crimes but don’t provide arrest totals involving local police partners.

Politics and power are driving the 287(g) Program’s rapid expansion, according to Kocher. Republican-led states, including Florida, are passing laws requiring local police to sign on to the program. In conservative counties, it’s popular to aid Trump’s mass deportation effort. As a result, a large portion of new agencies signing 287(g) agreements are sheriff’s offices, which run county jails.

“Sheriff’s offices are elected,” Kocher said. “Many of them are more than happy to do this, right? But regardless, it’s also a public visibility electoral thing.”

The expansion is not, however, driven by money. In fact, many expenses associated with the federal partnership, such as officer salaries, overtime and transportation, are covered by local agencies and taxpayers, per the agreements.

Local departments can participate in three ways. The jail enforcement and warrant service officer models limit local agencies’ immigration powers to people already being held in local jails and state prisons for other charges. The task force model extends that authority to community policing.

The Obama administration abandoned the task force agreements, deeming other enforcement programs, specifically those allowing local officers to share information with ICE, to be more efficient.

The Trump administration’s decision to resurrect them has drawn sharp criticism. Immigration advocates say it erodes communities’ trust in police, violates constitutional rights and shifts the focus of enforcement from immigrants charged with violent crimes to those who’ve committed minor offenses. They also note it comes as the Trump administration has dismissed civil rights investigations into several local police departments and gutted offices at the Homeland Security and Justice departments that probe police misconduct.

None of the agreements allow local officers to act on their own. They must be supervised or directed by ICE. Local officers are also supposed to receive 40 hours of online training to participate in task force agreements.

However, a 2021 Government Accountability Office report found the program lacked meaningful oversight policies, resulting in police departments violating the agreements and ICE policy.

Participation in the 287(g) Program is strongest in the Southeast, where entire states like Florida are mandating full cooperation with ICE. There were 277 agreements in Florida alone as of June 6, according to ICE’s online database.

But as quickly as it has taken hold in the Southeast, the expansion has so far missed the country’s biggest cities and counties, home to large immigrant populations.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, first row center, stands behind ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan at a press conference where she speaks about a multiagency immigration enforcement operation that ICE says resulted in the arrest of 1,120 individuals and included participation by state and local law enforcement through the 287(g) Program. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Doris Marie Provine, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and lead author of “Policing Immigrants: Local Law Enforcement on the Front Lines,” attributed big cities’ reluctance, in part, to concerns about the costs to police departments and taxpayers.

“From local law enforcement’s perspective, it’s an unfunded mandate,” Provine said. “There has been much more interest in community policing than there was 20 years ago, and that is very directly in conflict with turning local police into immigration officers.”

Since the 287(g) Program first ramped up nearly 20 years ago, it has faced repeated accusations of racial profiling and of creating a chilling effect among immigrant communities, who may be reluctant to report crimes.

Two Justice Department investigations alleged that enforcement under 287(g) agreements led to constitutional violations in North Carolina and Arizona. ICE subsequently pulled their agreements.

In North Carolina’s Alamance County, the DOJ found in 2012, six years after the sheriff signed a 287(g) agreement, that the sheriff’s office engaged “in a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing against Latinos.” A federal judge dismissed the case in 2015, following a bench trial, ruling that the DOJ failed to support its claim. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said the department doesn’t comment on past litigation. The sheriff signed an agreement with ICE in 2020 for enforcement in its jail, which remains in effect despite concerns that discriminatory policing practices continue.

In 2013, a federal judge in Arizona reaffirmed the DOJ’s findings and ruled separately that then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies had used race to target Latino drivers and Latino-majority areas with traffic stops and sweeps. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona had filed the lawsuit on behalf of citizens and legal residents caught in the sweeps less than a year after the sheriff signed a 287(g) agreement.

Trump pardoned Arpaio in 2017 of federal contempt charges for disregarding the judge’s ruling.

New Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan has declined to pursue new 287(g) agreements, citing the court’s ongoing scrutiny of the department to ensure officers comply with the 2013 ruling. The cost to taxpayers for the ongoing effort to root out racial profiling in the department had surpassed $300 million as of March.

Sheridan said he values the 287(g) Program but agreed with the judge’s finding that community enforcement under the county’s agreement was “racially biased.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about its monitoring of local agencies for potential civil rights violations.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “ICE’s 287(g) Program is playing a critical role in fulfilling President Trump’s promise to deport criminal illegal aliens and keep America safe. Dangerous criminal illegals with lengthy criminal records who pose a risk to the American people are detained all the time thanks to partnerships with local law enforcement officers.”

In an April speech to the Arizona Legislature, Tom Homan, Trump’s pick to lead the administration’s mass deportation efforts and a former ICE director, praised Arpaio’s work with ICE. The former sheriff was seated in the front row.

In highlighting ICE’s push for greater collaboration with local law enforcement, Homan rebuffed a common criticism of the 287(g) Program — that allowing police to enforce immigration laws erodes trust between communities and local officers.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing the talking point, ‘Well, we’re a welcoming community, we’re a sanctuary city because we want victims and witnesses of a crime that live in the immigrant community to feel safe coming to law enforcement to report that crime,’” Homan told Arizona lawmakers. “That is a bunch of garbage. A victim and witness of crime don’t want the bad guy back out there either.”

ICE is seeking more funding to expand 287(g) agreements and its detention and deportation capacity. During an appropriations hearing in May, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said the agency would reduce its reliance on private prisons.

“We would much rather partner with a sheriff’s department or a state corrections agency, someone that’s in a state where an individual is arrested that we don’t have to transport all around the country due to lack of bed space,” Lyons said.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-deportation-police-287g-program-expansion