Only one Nevada sheriff's office is working with ICE on immigration enforcement

Ricardo Torres-Cortez, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Feb 25, 2025

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The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office entered into agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that will allow selected local officers to conduct immigration enforcement at the jail and “during their routine police duties.”

The Northern Nevada agency is one of 170 law enforcement agencies participating in the 287(g) program nationwide, but the only one in the state.

The agreements were signed Wednesday, according to an ICE database, which hadn’t uploaded the documents that would show specifics.

Douglas County — which includes the towns of Genoa, Gardnerville, and Minden — had a population of just under 50,000 people as of 2023, according to the U.S. Census. Seasonally, that population can exceed 65,000 due to its proximity to Reno, Carson City and Northern California,” according to the county.

Agreements

ICE can enter into three types of partnerships with local and state law enforcement agencies.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is now part of “The Task Force Model” and “The Warrant Service Officer program,” according to ICE.

The first acts as a “force multiplier” to “enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight during their routine police duties,” ICE said. The latter “allows ICE to train, certify and authorize state and local law enforcement officers to serve and execute administrative warrants on aliens in their agency’s jail,” the federal agency said.

The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to inquiries seeking comment Tuesday. The county said it was issuing a response but hadn’t done so by publication time.

The Nevada agreements fall in line with President Donald Trump’s “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order, which called for increased collaboration between ICE and local and state law enforcement.

Participating agencies “nominate” officers, and train them on immigration policies and regulations, according to ICE, which said “nominees will receive training at the expense of ICE related to the immigration duties pertinent to the applicable” agreement.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many Douglas County officers were slated to participate.

‘ICE agents at this point’

Sadmira Ramic, senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said Tuesday that the organization was waiting to see specifics of the newly signed agreements.

She said the ACLU was particularly concerned with the task force model, noting that it had been discontinued under former President Barack Obama due to “very legitimate concerns about racial profiling and constitutional violations.”

“It’s very concerning given that now they’re bringing this model back,” Ramic said, adding that the model is “essentially making (Douglas County deputies) ICE agents at this point.”

Racial profiling will not ‘be tolerated’

ICE said racial profiling is “simply not something that will be tolerated, and any indication of racial profiling will be treated with the utmost scrutiny and fully investigated,” according to an updated fact-sheet.

In 2019, the Metropolitan Police Department ended its own 287(g) agreement that had allowed ICE to place detainers on undocumented inmates at the Clark County Detention Center.

Metro now contacts ICE when officers come across an undocumented inmate booked at the jail on allegations of violent crimes, DUI or domestic violence — or with an immigration hold — giving ICE agents a chance to pick up the inmate when they are released from jail. It amended its policy this year to comply with the Laken Riley Act, expanding the list of applicable charges, including petty theft.

Metro has maintained that its patrol officers will not enforce immigration violations on their own.

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