State Rep. Abigail Salisbury, D-Braddock, speaks at a ribbon cutting earlier this year. Salisbury is proposing legislation that would prohibit the Pennsylvania State Police from entering into an agreement to participate in an ICE program allowing local law officers to investigate, apprehend and detain immigrants.

Police agencies across the country are being faced with the choice of assisting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents with immigration arrests.

State Rep. Abigail Salisbury, D-Braddock, wants to make sure the Pennsylvania State Police aren’t among them. Salisbury is drafting legislation that wouldn’t allow the Pennsylvania State Police to enter into agreements with the federal government to participate in ICE raids.

“These agreements, known as 287(g) agreements, take important resources away from local matters to instead put police time and funds towards federal matters,” Salisbury wrote in her co-sponsorship memorandum. “Given these facts, it would be especially concerning if the Pennsylvania State Police were to participate in such an agreement. While there has been no stated interest in doing so by the PSP, and in fact they have adopted internal policies that prohibit such an agreement, I believe it is important to statutorily ensure that no such agreement can ever take place.”

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement earlier this year revived and expanded a decades-old program that trains local law officers to interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation. The 287(g) program — named for a section of the 1996 law that created it — currently applies only to those already jailed or imprisoned on charges.

In the early 2000s, many of the initial participants in the 287(g) program had agreements that allowed them to enforce immigration laws in their communities, not just their jails.

According to the Associated Press, problems arose in several places, including Arizona. In 2011, a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that deputies in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, had engaged in a pattern of racial profiling, unlawful stops and arrests of Latinos. The Department of Homeland Security ended its agreement with the county.

In recent years, ICE has offered two types of 287(g) agreements to law enforcement agencies. One model requires four weeks of training and allows local officers to question suspected noncitizens who are jailed on other charges and detain them for ICE. The other model, which Trump launched during his first term, requires eight hours of training and only allows local officers to serve federal immigration warrants. As of December, ICE had 135 agreements with sheriff’s offices, police departments and prison systems in 21 states, with requests pending from 35 others. Two-thirds of the agreements were in just three states — Florida, Texas and North Carolina. But no agreements had been signed during Biden’s four years as president, according to ICE data.

On his first day back in office, Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to maximize 287(g) agreements for local law officers to investigate, apprehend and detain immigrants. At a recent National Sheriffs’ Association conference, Homan said the administration is looking to lighten detention facility regulations and shorten the training to encourage greater collaboration with federal immigration officials.

Salisbury said the Pennsylvania State Police’s use in rural counties as a primary law enforcement agency – something some state lawmakers have said costs the state too much money amid a push to create more local police agencies – is one reason the Pennsylvania agency shouldn’t sign a 287(g) contract. Many areas in Warren County rely on the State Police for basic law enforcement needs.

“Two-thirds of Pennsylvania municipalities rely on part-time or full-time PSP coverage at increasing costs to the agency and the taxpayer,” she wrote. “Given their expansive coverage area and growing patrol costs, I believe that it is important that we ensure that the PSP cannot involve itself in the work of federal immigration authorities. The PSP joining a 287(g) agreement would only result in a higher workload for troopers, more burdens for taxpayers, and less faith in the PSP by the communities that rely on them.”

– The Associated Press contributed to this report.