What Will It Look Like When ICE Comes to Kentucky?
As federal immigration enforcement operations intensify across the country, Kentucky’s Republican lawmakers are moving to eliminate local control over how and if police work with ICE. House Bill 47 and Senate Bill 86 would reshape the relationship between Kentucky law enforcement and federal immigration authorities by forcing local police to participate in federal immigration programs. This would strip Kentucky law enforcement of the ability to determine what best serves their communities.
Kentucky GOP Is Mandating Local Cooperation with Federal Immigration Enforcement
Requires all Kentucky State Police to enter into agreements with ICE through the Task Force Model Program.
What’s the Task Force Model (TFM) Program?
TFM, or the 287(g) program, allows local law enforcement to “enforce certain aspects of U.S. immigration law,” enabling local officers trained by ICE to enforce immigration law during routine police activities, like traffic stops.
TFM was discontinued due to civil rights concerns, but Trump reinstated it.
Louisville Public Media reports that participating officers would have to complete 40 hours of training. Previously, the training was a full four weeks.
Broader in scope than HB 47, SB 86 requires local police not only to participate in the Task Force Model, but also in the Jail Enforcement Model and the Warrant Service Officer Model.
The Jail Enforcement Model helps “identify and process” immigrants with criminal or pending criminal charges that local law enforcement has arrested.
The Warrant Service Officer Model empowers ICE to train, certify, and authorize local police to serve and execute administrative warrants on immigrants in their agency’s jail.
Public Discourse Centers on Safety and the Loss of Local Control
While the rationale for these laws is to enhance public safety through coordination with federal authorities, these laws are far more likely to jeopardize Kentuckians’ safety. In Minneapolis, ICE has acted lawlessly, abusing many First Amendment protestors and publicly executing two citizens expressing their First and Second Amendment rights. The federal government has also violated the Tenth Amendment by refusing to investigate those two killings, resulting in mass resignations at the U.S. attorney’s office. There are numerous documented reports of ICE raiding homes without judicial warrants, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And ProPublica recently documented more than 40 cases of ICE using banned chokeholds. In the face of these numerous abuses, it is difficult to see how requiring law enforcement to integrate its operations with ICE would make anyone in the Commonwealth safer.
The ACLU also highlights the risk that requiring cooperation with ICE will detract from local law enforcement’s core mission. The American Immigration Council also argues that fundamentally blurring the line between local policing and federal immigration enforcement can erode community trust, divert resources from local needs, and increase civil rights violations.
Do you want to stop this legislation?
Make your voice heard! You can call the Legislative Message Line at 1-800-372-7181 or go to the Kentucky Legislature website to identify and contact your state representative or senator.