From Coal Country to ICE Country: How Trump Turned Rural Police into Immigration Agents, And They Like It
I watch old movies with Dad, and so last visit the 1942 drama, Casablanca, came on the tube. I'd watched it with him years ago as a boy. But watching the film in today's America put current events and the film into a different light.
In the opening scene, a jeep load of Nazi officers descends on a Moroccan street market with the aim of rounding up immigrants. They demand identification from a civilian. "May we see your papers, please?" Nervous, the man produces documents, but they're deemed expired. He tries to flee. And in an instant, the Nazi immigration officer guns down the man, shooting him in the back.
Today, a semblance of the movies plays out across the US with masked ICE agents grabbing people off the streets and disappearing them to "Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida or some private prison in Arizona.
I'm interested in how local police become part of the federal arm of the government when it comes to policing immigrants, especially in rural areas of the country like Appalachia.
Take Craig County, Virginia, population 5,000, nestled in the Appalachian mountains. The county sheriff signed an agreement in May making his deputies federal immigration agents, empowered to question anyone about their legal status during routine police encounters.
A traffic stop for speeding through the Blue Ridge can now trigger deportation proceedings because the local police have the authority to demand to see your papers, please, sir.
This transformation represents something unprecedented in the scale and systematic nature of American immigration enforcement. The state is unifying the police apparatus around the fear of immigrants and foreigners more broadly. Through a massive expansion of the obscure 287(g) program, Donald Trump is dissolving traditional boundaries between local and federal authority, creating a seamless surveillance network where immigration status becomes the organizing principle of all police encounters.
Unlike previous enforcement strategies that relied on coordination between separate agencies, this approach integrates local police directly into federal immigration enforcement. Every traffic stop or, for that matter, any interaction with the police, becomes a potential gateway to deportation.
True, America has seen aggressive federal enforcement before. The Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 swept up thousands of suspected radicals. Japanese American internment created concentration camps on American soil. However unjust these raids and round ups, they were different insofar as they were federal programs using federal agents against specific populations.
What's happening now is different. This is the systematic deputization of local police as federal agents during routine law enforcement—turning every municipal police department, county sheriff's office, and state agency into an arm of federal immigration enforcement.
In just five months since Trump's second inauguration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed more than 700 agreements with local police agencies across 40 states—a 419% increase from the 135 agreements that existed when Biden left office. Immigration scholar Austin Kocher calls it "the most radical expansion of the 287(g) program" he has ever documented. The result is an "army of deportation officers at a scale we have never seen before."
Most significantly, 339 of these agreements operate under the "Task Force Model"—the most aggressive version that Obama abandoned in 2012 after it led to systematic racial profiling and civil rights violations (ICE 287(g) Program data, June 2025). This model deputizes officers to enforce immigration law "during routine police enforcement duties," meaning any traffic stop can become an immigration investigation.
The geographic scope reveals the strategy's ambition. Among the agencies signing Task Force agreements are the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and police departments serving towns of a few hundred residents. The Pittsburg, New Hampshire police department—two officers serving 800 people—signed up despite its captain acknowledging he'd "never encountered a migrant crossing irregularly from Canada" in ten years.
Virginia exemplifies how this system is reshaping American federalism. Governor Glenn Youngkin directed state police to enter agreements with ICE, while thirteen sheriff's offices across the commonwealth have signed on. The participating counties—Grayson, Smyth, Franklin, Campbell, Appomattox—read like a cross-section of rural America.
These are places where federal immigration enforcement was previously minimal. Most Virginia agreements were signed between March and May 2025, suggesting coordinated federal planning rather than organic local response.
Austin Kocher's research reveals how thoroughly this has reorganized American law enforcement. The types of agencies signing agreements have "diversified wildly" beyond traditional police departments to include Florida Department of Financial Services, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, Florida National Guard, and Florida State Guard.
This isn't just about catching undocumented immigrants. It's about creating a comprehensive surveillance apparatus where immigration status becomes relevant to every government interaction. Need a business license? Want to fish? Pulled over for speeding? All can potentially trigger federal immigration consequences.
Perhaps most troubling is how the Trump administration dismantled existing safeguards. Ten days after taking office, Trump disbanded the Department of Homeland Security's seven-member advisory board that had evaluated 287(g) applications since 2009, including civil rights representatives.
The first new agreement was approved within 24 hours of the board's dissolution. On February 26, the administration approved 89 new agreements in a single day. The Guardian identified five departments that had earlier applications denied under oversight review, only to be quickly approved under Trump's deregulated process.
The pattern echoes the program's troubled history. In Alamance County, North Carolina, federal investigators found deputies were "four to 10 times more likely to stop Latino drivers than other groups". In Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio—whom Trump later pardoned—created what federal investigators called a "chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations".
The human consequences are already visible. In Tennessee, immigrant advocates report "whole communities are afraid to leave their homes". Parents keep children from school. Families avoid medical care.
Chelsea White learned this firsthand when her husband Hilario was arrested during a routine traffic stop in Tennessee. "That was the last time I saw him," she said. He was deported to Mexico after 25 years in the United States, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three children.
More troubling, Miguel Rojas Mendoza, a legal temporary protected status holder from Venezuela, was arrested during a traffic stop and somehow ended up in CECOT, El Salvador's notorious mega-prison, despite having legal permission to work in the United States.
Critics note that Obama deported more people annually—438,421 in 2013 versus Trump's current pace of roughly 200,000 over four months. But this misses the crucial distinction: Obama's enforcement remained primarily federal, while Trump's approach dissolves the federal-local distinction entirely. Local officers themselves become federal agents. The 287(g) Task Force Model makes routine policing indistinguishable from immigration enforcement.
The expansion into Appalachian Virginia reveals particular ironies. These communities have historically viewed federal authority with suspicion, yet local sheriffs enthusiastically partner with federal immigration enforcement. This reflects economic realities—many counties face budget constraints, and the 287(g) program offers federal training and resources. Many sheriffs also respond to genuine constituent preferences for aggressive immigration enforcement.
Perhaps most chilling is how efficiently this system operates without public awareness. Unlike highly visible family separation policies, the 287(g) expansion has proceeded with minimal media attention. ICE redesigned its website to streamline applications, providing templates that local agencies can simply "plug in."
The bureaucratic machinery runs smoothly because it builds on existing structures. No new agencies need creation—existing police departments simply receive additional federal authorities. The infrastructure has technical dimensions that make resistance increasingly difficult: automated license plate readers, facial recognition systems, and database sharing create persistent surveillance capabilities.
The program's logic drives continued expansion. Once neighboring counties sign agreements, holdout agencies face pressure to join. State legislation accelerates this—when Florida requires all detention facilities to participate, it eliminates local choice entirely.
Not everywhere has embraced this transformation. Liberal jurisdictions continue to resist, leading Trump border czar Tom Homan to threaten Democratic officials with arrest.
The resistance reveals the system's political logic. Immigration enforcement maps onto America's urban-rural divide. Rural sheriffs sign up enthusiastically while urban police chiefs resist. The result is a geographically segmented system where civil liberties depend on which county you're driving through.
This raises fundamental questions about American democracy and federalism. When local elected officials can unilaterally transform their departments into federal immigration agents, what happens to local democratic control?
Yes, at some level, these are elected sheriffs responding to constituents. But most voters probably didn't vote specifically on 287(g) agreements or understand their implications. More fundamentally, this isn't really about immigration—it's about constructing a particular kind of state power where federal authorities can monitor local populations through local agents.
Some will argue this is hyperbolic—we still have courts, elections, and constitutional protections. But the concern isn't about current universal abuse—it's about the infrastructure being built and its capacity for future abuse. Police states often emerge gradually through legal means, using democratic processes to construct undemocratic systems.
Most Americans remain unaware this transformation is happening because it operates through administrative expansion rather than dramatic new legislation. The machinery builds quietly in sheriff's offices across the country.
Back in Craig County, Virginia, the sheriff's decision probably seemed routine.
By the time the system's scope becomes visible, it has already reorganized American law enforcement. The assemblage is complete—a unified police apparatus where immigration status becomes the organizing principle of all state encounters, where local police operate as federal agents, where the distinction between community protection and federal enforcement has dissolved entirely.
This is what authoritarianism looks like in a federal democracy: not the sudden seizure of power, but the patient construction of systems that make resistance impossible and accountability irrelevant. The papers, please, are no longer demanded at checkpoints—they're required at every interaction with American law enforcement.
And it's happening in the quiet mountains of Virginia, one sheriff's department at a time.