To combat the flow of undocumented aliens into America, immigration enforcement has gone local.
Starting in 2002, some city and state law enforcement officials began coordinating with federal immigration officials to check people’s residency status during routine police work. Through Section 287(g)—a previously unused part of the 1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Re-sponsibility Act—counties and municipalities have signed agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to receive federally funded training, access to immigration data-bases, and money for additional detention costs in exchange for monitoring the immigration status of people who are arrested or stopped by the police. But the policy has inspired litigation from immigrant advocates, who say it encourages racial profiling and wrongful detention.
