Eufaula Police Chief David Bryning signed the contract but has decided to cancel it. He says he’s never had a problem with any of the handful of immigrant families living in his town, and gang activity isn’t a concern either.

In the small farming community of Sterling, a singlestreet town of 730 people, Police Chief Brad Alexander entered into a contract with ICE and deputized all seven of his full-time and reserve officers with the power to enforce federal immigration laws.

Also in Comanche County, just across the railroad tracks, Fletcher Police Chief Jason DeLonais entered into the same contract. But he’s hesitant to bestow federal powers on his officers, he said. Out of an abundance of caution and until he knows more, he alone is receiving training.

Across the state, just south of Muskoge e, Eufaula Police Chief David Bryning signed the contract earlier this year, too. It has been gathering dust, sitting on the back corner of his desk, while he’s been meaning to cancel it.

Statewide, 16 municipal, county, and state law enforcement agencies have entered into agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since President Donald Trump took office in January.

Trump campaigned on conducting a historical mass deportation of unauthorized migrants leading up to his election. After Trump won, Gov. Kevin Stitt launched Operation Guardian, and state lawmakers began setting up a system to make it happen in Oklahoma.

As local police gain powers to make federal arrests and ICE gains more boots — and eyes — on the ground, local detentions continue to spike. And the agreements continue to gain popularity among law enforcement at every level for their mutually perceived benefits.

Federal Agreements and Local Police Powers Called 287(g) agreements after their section in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1991, they allow local police to interrogate and arrest people for federal immigration violations, then hold them for deportation processing.

There are three enforcement models that local agencies can enter. The TaskForceModelistheone adopted by Sterling, Fletcher, Vinita, and Eufaula.

The Obama administration terminated task force agreements nationwide more than a decade ago, following multiple lawsuits and Department of Justice investigations for patterns and practices of constitutional violations and racial profiling. An investigation later found the 287(g) program was ineffective, and that ICE was not properly monitoring officers through the completion of training.

Trump has renewed and embraced those partnerships, using the task force model as an expansion of force and the reach of his mass deportation policies.

But agencies previously used much more discretion when choosing to arrest people or contacting ICE, said Oklahoma immigration attorney Lorena Rivas.

“Now they make sure and contact ICE for every individual who happens to be taken into custody in their jurisdiction,” Rivas said. “And now every time ICE is made aware of somebody, they will go and pick them up.”

She said that under the Trump administration, and with encouragement from Stitt and guidance from Oklahoma Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton, local law enforcement officers are more willing to act like ICE agents.

“They want to take part in it,” Rivas said. “They want to feel like that hero, I guess.”

Answering the Call In the first months of Trump’s second presidency, the number of local law enforcement agencies participating in these programs more than doubled. Florida leads nationally with 257 agreements, 209 of which were signed since February. Oklahoma has 18 agreements and ranks in the top 10 states with the most participation and cooperation with ICE’s immigration enforcement.

Across social media platforms, ICE has put out recruitment ads, including World War II era graphics of Uncle Sam reading, “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.”

The department said they are seeking people with integrity and courage, while offering up to $50,000 in signing bonuses and $60,000 in student loan repayment. It’s also been recruiting law enforcement from local and state agencies, sending blast emails and providing templated requests to chiefs to demonstrate interest in the 287(g) program.

Oklahoma Watch and KOSU talked to four local police departments with contracts and requested records about their contracts and communication with federal agencies.

Acknowledging concerns, participating local police said they won’t be arresting unauthorized migrants without a reason.

Alexander, the Sterling chief, said that as the state highway patrol shifts its focus to patrolling rural turnpikes, he suspects criminals will start driving through towns like his to avoid them. He said the agreement is a tool to keep the enemies of the United States away.

“I think it’s a patriotic duty of our department and any other police department to have that type of attitude,” he said.

He said his department won’t be racially profiling people. The tiny immigrant population living in Sterling is not his focus.

“It’s not about race,” he said. “It’s about what? Your intentions. Our intent is, we’re going after the criminal element.”

Human and drug trafficking in particular, he said, a problem he encountered several months ago.

“We had taxicabs that were bringing large volumes of women and children to our community and being dropped off there, being illegal immigrants who couldn’t speak no English,” Alexander said. “I have a fear of children being abducted, and I never want something like that to ever happen on my watch.”

Rivas has a team at her firm dedicated to triaging the increased rate of local immigration detention cases in Oklahoma. If local police officers meant to help trafficking victims, Rivas said, they’d recommend existing federal T-Visas, which are meant just for them.

She said her team’s work shows that protecting victims of human trafficking is not the focus of local police, who are jumping at the opportunity to enforce immigration.

“That is such an asinine argument,” she said. “We have identified victims of trafficking. We have applied for this visa, but they become arrested either because they have an old deportation order or because they have an encounter with law enforcement.”

Instead of stopping their deportation and having their immigration cases adjudicated quickly, people are removed from the country before attorneys can act, she said.

Alexander said he hasn’t seen much more evidence of trafficking since Trump took office. The incident he mentioned, he said, happened late last year. He called the ICE agreements preventative maintenance.

“We’re trying to get ahead of it so that if something does rear its ugly head, then we’re able to handle it, and being trained on how to handle it instead of knee-jerk reaction,” he said.

Vinita Police Chief Mark Johnson signed the same task force agreement with ICE in February. Johnson said that in a rural ranching community of approximately 5,500, smalltown officers can never get enough training and qualifications because their small numbers mean they never know what situation they’ll respond to.

“There is no such thing as bad training,” said Johnson. “It all just makes us better at policing, giving us training to do a better job.”

In northeast Oklahoma, Johnson has nominated their only bilingual officer to receive federal immigration training. Vinita, within the Cherokee Nation, lies at a turnpike that joins I-44, which Johnson said brings out-oftown traffic from Texas going north and from Illinois going south.

“This officer is also the one that I call in if we have a traffic stop,“ Johnson said. “He can sit there and talk back and forth and explain the situation and try to figure out all the details that are going on.”

The last thing he wants to do, Johnson said, is arrest someone because of a misunderstanding or language barrier, and that this training will give his bilingual officer more tools to assess and respond to calls.

Limited Resources

Some law enforcement officials are keen on preventative training, but others are more wary of the surge of power.

DeLonais, the Fletcher police chief, said he signed the agreement this year and will be the only member of his department receiving the training.

That’s because he wants to learn more about how the agreement can be helpful to his small team of officers while exercising caution with the amount of power the task force model agreement endows local police, allowing them to interrogate anyone about their immigration status.

Eufaula Police Chief David Bryning made his agreement with ICE in late February, but has since decided to cancel.

His initial signing was prompted by the prospects of more cooperation with federal agencies, he said, but when he looked at what exactly the contract entailed, he decided it wouldn’t benefit his community.

Bryning said he’s never had a problem with any of the handful of immigrant families living in his town of about 2,700 people, and gang activity isn’t a concern either. On top of that, he said, his staff of 12 fulltime officers and two reservists is already reaching its output limits.

“I would have to pull people away and send them to get training,” he said. “We couldn’t take guys away even if there was a need.”

While Bryning isn’t the only chief to sign an agreement with ICE, he is unique, so far, in deciding to rescind one before it’s even implemented.

Jurisdictional Shifts Create Confusion None of these departments has received training from ICE, but officers are preparing for the jurisdictional scramble that will occur when beginning to make federal immigration arrests.

Vinita’s chief, Johnson, said it’s always messy when the federal government makes massive policy shifts in law enforcement.

“Every time we make a move as a government, every time, it’s always got confusion,” Johnson said.

He compared the confusion to the recent McGirt decision, describing the jurisdictional landscape after the landmark Supreme Court ruling.

“This became the most out-of-control and confused law enforcement you would have ever seen,” he said.

The decision recognized and upheld tribal sovereignty, while also significantly shifting state jurisdiction. Recent cases have further complicated the legal landscape, with rulings that the state could have concurrent jurisdiction when non-Natives commit crimes on tribal land.

With increasing collaboration between state and federal agencies to enforce federal immigration law, officers predict a similar confusion while adjusting to new duties.

Municipalities have the choice to enter into agreements, and if they do, they can decide when to enforce immigration violations they encounter.

Johnson said he’d like to see more direction from ICE around immigration enforcement and a whole host of other kinds of work.

“I would love to move in a way that is seamless, but so far in 18 years, I have not seen a single thing done by the government that ever comes out like that,” he said. “They always come out messy.”

This story was a collaboration between Oklahoma Watch and public radio station KOSU.

Maria Guinnip is a summer 2025 intern at Oklahoma Watch with support from Columbia University Graduate School and the Institute for Nonprofit News. Contact her at mguinnip@oklahomawatch.org.

Lionel Ramos covers state government for KOSU. Reach him at lionel@ kosu.org.