US sheriffs decry White House effort to hire away local law enforcement for Ice

The White House’s aggressive push to hire federal immigration agents is causing friction with local sheriffs – even those who back Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.

More than a dozen US sheriffs and law enforcement associations have complained that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has tried to poach local deputies and officers as Ice rapidly expands.

“It is unprofessional and unethical,” Grady Judd, the sheriff in Polk county, Florida, told the Guardian last month after his deputies received recruitment emails from Ice.

Ice utilized an email list the sheriff had provided as part of his partnership supporting Trump’s deportations; the messages noted recruits could receive a $50,000 hiring bonus.

“It’s tantamount to us going to police departments and putting up a recruiting booth in their lobby,” said Judd, a Republican who has authorized his deputies to carry out immigration arrests.

Judd and other sheriffs have spoken out as the Trump administration has launched its massive recruitment effort to hire 10,000 new Ice officers and 3,000 border patrol agents, backed by an unprecedented $170bn in funding for immigration enforcement activities.

The anger from conservative sheriffs, generally Trump’s close allies, underscores the challenges the White House is facing as it makes deportations and the expansion of Ice a top priority, sometimes at the expense of other law enforcement interests.

Federal agents who would normally handle child abuse, money laundering, fraud and other serious crimes have been diverted to immigration enforcement, targeting undocumented people with civil violations, Reuters reported in March.

Last month, the administration moved to temporarily reassign more than 100 FBI agents to conduct nighttime patrols in Washington DC, even though FBI officers generally have little experience or training in patrolling or immigration.

The backlash from Judd and other sheriffs in Florida was notable as the state has led the nation in 287(g) agreements, which empower local law enforcement departments to directly assist Ice. Immigrant rights’ groups have long criticized those partnerships as harmful to public safety, as they make immigrant communities less likely to report crimes or assist police in investigations.

Some of the most vocally Trump-supporting sheriffs have criticized Ice’s recruitment. Wayne Ivey, the sheriff in Brevard county, Florida – who made headlines in June for threatening to hospitalize and “kill” anti-Ice protesters – told WESH 2 News last month that Ice’s targeting of local deputies was “backhanded” and “frustrated every sheriff”.

Judd said his department was paying for deputies to be trained as immigration officers, allowing them to arrest and jail undocumented people for Ice. That arrangement gave Ice access to his deputies’ contact information.

“You took government documents that we filled out to help you, to recruit our people that we trained on our dime to support you. That’s low-rent,” he said. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Recruitment emails to sheriff’s deputies were signed by Madison Sheahan, Ice’s deputy director, who previously served as an aide to Kristi Noem, homeland security secretary, when Noem was South Dakota governor, ABC News reported. Sheahan, 28, has no prior immigration enforcement experience and has alienated career officials within Ice, according to a recent Atlantic story delving into internal conflicts at the agency.

“As someone who is currently supporting Ice through the 287(g) program, you understand the unique responsibility we carry in protecting our communities and upholding federal law,” Sheahan’s recruitment email said. “Ice is actively recruiting officers like you.”

Judd said Ice representatives in Florida weren’t involved in the recruitment and had apologized. He blamed Sheahan, saying she and her DC colleagues did not acknowledge the misstep: “They doubled down. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t say it was bad form. That made me even more angry. It just shows her lack of maturity,” he said. “The illustration to me is they’re probably sneaky and underhanded and not professional with the way they run the rest of the organization.”

Still, Judd said, “We’re not going to back down on President Trump’s mission. We’ll continue to help Ice, because we are professional, unlike the Ice deputy.”

In the first five months of the year, Judd’s office detained more than 200 undocumented people for Ice in the county’s jails, according to the Ledger newspaper.

The National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents sheriffs across the country, also raised concerns about Ice recruitment. The association’s executive director said last month it would be hard for local departments to compete with the $50,000 bonus and other incentives, which could burden agencies already struggling with staffing.

Judd, however, said he wasn’t concerned about his deputies joining Ice. He said he suspected ongoing anti-Ice protests were hampering recruitment: “It’s a very difficult and dangerous job … and you’ve got to be comfortable and sure that the community supports you. When people see the way that Ice is being unfairly targeted, even if they want to be in law enforcement, they don’t want to be in that branch.”

Scott Shuchart, a former senior Ice official under Biden, who has raised concerns about Trump recruitment spree, said it seemed “really disrespectful” to poach from sheriffs who have invested their own funding to support Ice through 287(g) agreements: “They’re already taking sheriff’s deputies who are supposed to be keeping the community safe and instead are helping out Ice. To now do the double whammy of stealing those resources to be fully Ice’s seems like no way to treat a partner.”

On Tuesday, the US Department of Homeland Security announced a program to reimburse local law enforcement agencies for the salaries of trained 287(g) officers and said departments would be “eligible for monetary performance awards based on the successful location of illegal aliens”.

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, said in a statement that Ice was recruiting “local law enforcement, veterans, and our 287(g) partners who have already been trained and have valuable law enforcement experience”. More than $500m from Trump’s major budget bill would go toward expanding 287(g) partnerships, she added.

McLaughlin also said Sheahan, the Ice deputy director, had law enforcement experience from her previous job as secretary of the Louisiana department of wildlife and fisheries, and had been “instrumental in leading negotiations” for more than 900 287(g) agreements: “These attacks on Madison Sheahan’s leadership style have no basis in reality and are rooted in sexism. [She] is a work horse, strong executor, and accountable leader who along with [acting Ice director] Todd Lyons is leading the men and women of Ice law enforcement to achieve the American people’s mandate to target, arrest, and deport criminal illegal aliens.”

The effort to recruit sheriffs “shows how both cruel and reckless this administration is when it comes to law enforcement”, added Juan Cuba, executive director of Sheriff Accountability Action, a group that advocates for criminal justice reforms.

“It’s a complete disregard for one of the biggest issues local law enforcement has, which is recruitment and retention. Those challenges are exacerbated by the administration’s approach, but they don’t care. What they care about is hitting these artificial quotas,” he said, noting Trump’s demands for 3,000 immigration arrests a day. “It’s less about public safety and more about just feeding this mass deportation machine.”

Some sheriffs do oppose efforts to have their deputies act as immigration officers, because they already feel stretched thin or are concerned about eroding public trust, Cuba noted. But publicly objecting can carry consequences, he said, noting that after Broward county’s sheriff said he didn’t want deputies arresting people for civil immigration violations, Florida’s attorney general threatened to take steps to have him removed from office.

“We see silence from police chiefs and sheriffs because of political threats,” he said. “It is very alarming that public officials feel like they can’t raise concerns.”