U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers escort a man in handcuffs during an operation in Escondido, Calif. In Prince William County, local law enforcement will end a longstanding collaboration with ICE in the county jail.

Gregory Bull / AP Photo

Prince William County will not extend its 287(g) agreement with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), which means local law enforcement employees will no longer be deputized as an arm of the federal immigration authority. The Prince William–Manassas Regional Jail Board met Wednesday night and because none of the 11 members put forward a motion to extend it, the agreement will automatically expire on June 30.

The arrangement between the county and ICE, which began in 2007, expires on June 30. Once it expires, Culpeper County will be the only jurisdiction in Virginia to have such an agreement with ICE.

Under the agreement as it currently stands, all people booked into the county jail undergo screening by local law enforcement employees trained by ICE. Those who are identified as being in the country illegally can then be held under an ICE detainer request for up to 48 hours past their release date from jail.

ICE officials who presented at a meeting of the county’s jail board on Wednesday night said the program allows ICE to conserve resources and spend less time out in the community looking for people who have been identified as eligible for deportation. In particular, it helps them easily detain people who would not otherwise be fingerprinted at the jail because they were arrested for minor crimes.

Henry Lucero, the executive associate director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE, said that in communities in Northern Virginia that do not have 287(g) programs, “we’re out there more actually, because of individuals we know that have gotten arrested, booked, and released.”

Critics of the 287(g) policy point out that it does not have any proven connection to public safety. Some argue that it creates an environment of fear among immigrants in the county. The county, which is majority-minority, has a significant immigrant population: nearly one in four residents is foreign-born.

“This does not keep the community safe,” Luis Aguilar, director of the immigrant advocacy group CASA Virginia, told DCist/WAMU last month. “We’re talking about a community that does not reach out to law enforcement because of the huge distrust that there is in Prince William County. And we can take a look at other surrounding counties, and you can see that … they do not require a [287(g)] program to keep the community safe.”

“I have not seen any hard data where the 287 program has been shown to be a direct cause of any measurable crime reduction in Prince William County,” said Prince William County police chief Barry Barnard at the Wednesday evening jail board meeting. Barnard, who has been chief of the department since 2016, announced earlier this year that he will retire on July 1, one day after 287(g) expires.

Barnard says when the policy first went into effect, the idea was that it would focus on identifying only those who commit the most serious crime for potential deportation. “Today, we’re putting detainers on anybody regardless of the crime committed, so I think we’ve drifted away from that a little bit. I do wonder if this program has run its course,” Barnard said.

“Our immigrant community is well aware and well educated that our adult detention staff has this program there,” Barnard added. “Some in the immigrant communities will make a decision to avoid police for concern that they or family members or friends will be caught up in an ICE deportation case that comes through the jail.”

The Prince William Times reported Wednesday that of 579 residents who were deported under the 287(g) agreement in the county, 125 had not been convicted of a crime, or had their charges dropped.

Prince William County Sheriff Glen Hill defended the program, saying it “has operated very quietly in Prince William County.”

“We’ve had no complaints about it,” said Hill.

But Hill was ultimately overruled by the jail board, who decided not to take up a motion to extend the program.

Del. Elizabeth Guzmán who represents District 31 in Virginia’s House of Delegates and also serves as a newly-appointed member of the jail board, said she was speaking on behalf of the immigrant community in saying, “we don’t like this program. It created division. And many people who look like me left the county because of that.”

Ending the program will save Prince William County officials some money. Though ICE pays for the training of the local employees it uses for immigration enforcement, county officials said Wednesday that staffing the program has cost about $287,000 this fiscal year — though that cost was offset by about $119,000 in revenue from renting jail beds to ICE.

Advocates for immigrant rights celebrated the jail board’s decision to let the program expire. Shortly before the jail board meeting on Wednesday, the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights held a rally outside the Prince William County Adult Detention Center, where community members called on the jail board to end 287(g).

At the end of the meeting, Guzman thanked the ICE officials for their attendance. “We need to use our local dollars to fix our own problems,” she told them.

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