As WMUR reported this week, 15 law enforcement agencies in New Hampshire have now entered into formal partnerships with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the federal 287(g) program. That is a meaningful number for a state of 1.4 million people, and it represents a continued shift in how local sheriffs and police departments interact with federal immigration authority.

The headline raises a fair question for Granite State residents: what does that partnership actually do, and what does it not? Below is a plain-English read on what 287(g) is, how it works in practice, and why the New Hampshire count has been growing.

What 287(g) Is

The 287(g) program takes its name from a 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act. It allows ICE to enter into written agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies that delegate certain immigration-enforcement authorities to designated, trained local officers under federal supervision.

In current ICE practice, those agreements come in three flavors:

The Jail Enforcement Model lets specifically trained officers in a county jail screen people who have already been arrested on state or local charges to identify those who are removable under federal immigration law. The Warrant Service Officer Model allows trained local officers to serve and execute administrative warrants on noncitizens already in their custody. The Task Force Model, which had been retired for years and was reactivated in recent federal policy cycles, allows local officers to perform certain immigration-enforcement functions in the field, again under federal training and supervision.

Each model has a different footprint inside a department. None of them turn a sheriff’s deputy into an ICE agent. All of them are governed by a memorandum of agreement that specifies what local officers can and cannot do.

Why The Count Is Rising

Federal incentives, agency-level decisions, and political winds all matter here.

ICE has been actively recruiting new 287(g) partners as part of a broader interior-enforcement push. For local sheriffs and chiefs, the question is whether to formalize a working relationship that, in many cases, already existed informally — phone calls, detainer requests, and case-by-case cooperation. A 287(g) agreement turns that ad hoc relationship into a documented arrangement with training requirements, federal liability provisions, and clear lines of authority.

For some New Hampshire agencies, signing on is framed as a way to professionalize and standardize that cooperation rather than expand it. For others, it is a signal of philosophical alignment with stricter interior enforcement. The honest answer is that both motivations are present in the 15-agency tally — the program is not monolithic, and individual chiefs have made the call for their own reasons.

What It Does Not Mean

It is worth being precise about what the count does and does not change on the ground.

A 287(g) agreement does not turn every routine traffic stop into an immigration interview. The Jail Enforcement and Warrant Service models, in particular, are limited to people already in custody on other charges. A motorist pulled over for speeding in a town whose police chief has signed a 287(g) MOA is not, by virtue of that agreement, suddenly subject to immigration questioning at the roadside.

It also does not give local officers free-floating arrest authority outside the federal scope of the program. The agreements are narrow legal instruments. The officers who exercise them have to complete ICE training and operate within ICE-supervised constraints.

That said, critics argue — and supporters acknowledge — that any deeper integration between local policing and federal immigration enforcement reshapes the relationship between immigrant communities and their local police force. Chiefs in jurisdictions that have signed agreements have generally said the program is a tool, not a culture change. Critics counter that the tool changes the culture whether anyone intends it to or not.

What This Means For New Hampshire

Fifteen agencies is a substantial percentage of the state’s larger sheriff and municipal police population. It puts New Hampshire well ahead of where it was even a few cycles ago, and it places the Granite State on a different footing than several of its New England neighbors, where state-level legislation has either restricted or barred such cooperation.

That divergence is itself a policy story worth watching heading into the next state and federal election cycles. Immigration enforcement, like several other public-safety questions, is becoming a topic on which New Hampshire voters get a clear, locally visible signal of where their elected sheriffs and chiefs stand.

For now, the 15 agencies are publicly listed by ICE, the agreements are publicly available, and the operational details — how many people each agency processes, under which model, with what outcomes — are the kind of metrics that residents and reporters can keep asking for. That accountability layer is the actual benefit of having the partnerships on paper rather than in informal phone calls.

The Bottom Line

A 287(g) agreement is a narrow, specific federal-local memorandum that takes existing cooperation and writes it down. Fifteen New Hampshire agencies have now done that. It is a meaningful shift in the public posture of those departments, but it is not — by itself — a redefinition of what local policing looks like for the average Granite Stater. The numbers will keep being worth tracking. So will the operational details that show up underneath them.

What is the 287(g) program?

It is a federal program created under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act that lets ICE enter into formal agreements delegating certain immigration enforcement authorities to trained state and local law enforcement officers, under federal supervision and through specified models — typically the Jail Enforcement Model, the Warrant Service Officer Model, or the Task Force Model.

Does a 287(g) agreement let local police make immigration arrests during a traffic stop?

Generally no. The most common 287(g) models — Jail Enforcement and Warrant Service — are limited to interactions inside a jail or with people already in custody on other charges. The reactivated Task Force Model has broader scope, but it is still bounded by the terms of the specific agreement and ICE supervision.

How many New Hampshire law enforcement agencies have 287(g) partnerships?

Fifteen, according to recent reporting. ICE publishes a current list of participating agencies, and New Hampshire’s count places it ahead of several New England neighbors that have legal restrictions on this kind of formal cooperation.

Source: “15 law enforcement agencies in New Hampshire partner with ICE”, WMUR.