Two Democratic congressmen from Texas are telling six cities around San Antonio to get out of agreements that allow local police to perform certain immigration-enforcement duties for ICE. And they’re framing the fight squarely around President Donald Trump.
But stay with me, because there’s a rather important wrinkle in this story: the federal authority they’re fighting dates back to Bill Clinton.
Reps. Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar held a press conference Wednesday in San Antonio calling on Hollywood Park, China Grove, St. Hedwig, Balcones Heights, Sandy Oaks, and Von Ormy to terminate their 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
These aren’t merely symbolic arrangements. The six municipalities participate in what’s known as the Task Force model. Officers receive training and can then perform specified immigration functions during their normal police duties, including questioning people they encounter about citizenship status, accessing ICE databases, and arresting suspects they believe are illegally present in the United States.
Castro says the consequences are serious.
He argued that 287(g) arrangements have contributed to racial profiling and effectively transform hometown police officers into federal immigration agents. He also suggested there is another incentive at work: money.
“I believe a big part of the reason they are doing it is they are trying to balance their budgets with this money, because they receive money for every officer that is trained to carry out this partnership with ICE,” Castro said.
Now, there’s another layer here. Texas law requires counties operating jails to participate in 287(g). The six municipal agreements at issue involve the Task Force model, but the broader political direction in Texas is unmistakable: state officials want cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Castro wants these cities moving in the opposite direction.
And he didn’t exactly whisper his opinion of ICE.
“Bear in mind that ICE has become a rogue, abusive organization under Donald Trump,” Castro said. “We’ve seen their brutality on the streets, but I’ve seen their brutality, as has Greg, behind the closed doors in places like the Dilley trailer prison.”
Castro has repeatedly criticized the reopened South Texas Family Residential Center, which houses families awaiting removal from the United States. He has visited the facility at least seven times since its reopening and has alleged medical neglect and problems with food while calling for it to be closed.
Then Casar stepped up with an equally direct message for local mayors.
“Our ask today is simple: mayors across Bexar County need to stop signing up their police to do Donald Trump’s ICE enforcement,” he said. “We’re here to tell them, get out, cut it out, we do not need our communities selling out.”
That’s where the history gets interesting.
Call the Trump administration’s current immigration policies whatever you want, but Section 287(g) itself did not originate with Trump. Not even close.
Congress created the provision through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, incorporated into legislation signed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Yes, Bill Clinton.
And the same legislation did more than authorize agreements allowing state and local officers to perform designated immigration functions. It also gave the federal government authority to waive certain environmental requirements to speed construction of border barriers.
Clinton wasn’t coy about what the legislation was supposed to accomplish.
“It strengthens the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system,” Clinton said at the time, while emphasizing that people living in the country legally should not be punished.
So Casar’s description of these agreements as “Donald Trump’s ICE enforcement” captures the current political battle, but not the origins of the authority itself. The machinery was put into federal law three decades ago under a Democratic president.
And supporters of ICE cooperation have a practical argument of their own.
Then-Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told Breitbart Texas in 2025 that immigration officers would much rather take custody of a wanted person while that individual is already securely detained than hunt for the same person later in a neighborhood.
“Any ICE agent or officer will tell you they’d much rather have the cooperation of a state or local agency,” Lyons said, arguing that controlled transfers are safer for ICE personnel, local officers, and the person being transferred.
Without that cooperation, Lyons said, an arrest can become a much larger operation.
“You’re looking at five to six officers or agents being on that arrest team,” he explained. With additional security needed because of threats against ICE personnel, he said another five or six officers could be involved.
And there it is.
Castro and Casar see local participation as an improper expansion of federal immigration enforcement into community policing. ICE argues that cooperation allows arrests and transfers to happen in controlled environments rather than forcing agents into potentially riskier street operations.
