Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton is in charge of implementing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda across Oklahoma. Gov. Kevin Stitt assigned him the task in November, shortly after the general election.
And following three state law enforcement agencies entering agreements with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), allowing them to act as street-level immigration officers, Tipton called a press conference to explain how it will work.
The involved state agencies are the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety and the state’s Bureaus of Investigations (OSBI) and Narcotics (OBN). Tipton said officers in local law enforcement jurisdictions have expressed enthusiasm for entering similar agreements in the coming months.
“Under ICE authority and supervision, those troopers and agents will be able to carry out a variety of initiating deportation proceedings,” Tipton said, “And there's such a wide variety, you know, in the people that we’re targeting.”
He said about 50 troopers, investigators and narcotics agents will be trained in the coming week, along with a number of state officers from Florida. Public safety agencies in that state, including all 67 county sheriff jurisdictions, have entered similar arrangements with ICE, per reports by WUSF public radio.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, these state-level immigration enforcement agreements add more spokes for support.
The agreements create a new task force model of what are known as 287(g) programs in local jails across the country, named after their section in the federal immigration code. They deputize local officers to act as federal immigration agents and include training and some supplies from federal authorities.
Local taxpayers will pay the cost of implementation in their jurisdiction.
In a press release last week, Stitt said the partnerships are just one more step to strengthening border security.
”By working directly with ICE, our law enforcement officers now have additional tools to keep dangerous criminals off our streets and protect Oklahomans," he said.
What kind of enforcement will be allowed?
Tipton said the focus is on public safety and national security concerns. But, he said, people pulled over by highway patrol without a driver’s license will need to be identified and could be booked into their local county jail.
At that point, they’re fair game for deportation as long as there are 287(g) trained and certified officers to complete the administrative work.
”It’s not the target in this, but if somebody violates the law and comes into contact with law enforcement, they don't have an Oklahoma driver's license. we do need to identify that person,” Tipton said. “We do need to go through the process of figuring out are they here legally or not?”
Tipton also mentioned some 700,000 people in the U.S. with “administrative warrants,” which are issued to those who have violated civil immigration law and otherwise have no criminal record. Those violations include but are not limited to crossing any U.S. border without permission and living in the country with expired visas for work and school. Oklahomans found to have such warrants could be processed for deportation by state
When it comes to the task force units created under the new agreements and any ICE-trained and certified officers, they will be authorized to conduct the following:
- Interrogations of anyone they know or suspect in the country without federal permission.
- Warrantless arrests of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally and who is ‘likely to escape” authorities before a warrant is issued.
- Serving and executing arrest warrants for immigration violations under federal law, as well as taking and considering evidence supporting their arrests.
- Issuance of immigration detainers for ICE, collection of related data and transportation of individuals to and from federal holding facilities.
What remains to be seen is which and how many local law enforcement jurisdictions will enter similar agreements with ICE.
Support from local law enforcement jurisdictions varies when it comes to using their own resources — and jail space — to arrest people on behalf of the federal government.
Some, like Sheriff Vic Regalado in Tulsa, have pushed for expanding these kinds of local-federal partnerships. His department has one pre-dating the state’s arrangements, but he still worries about jail space.
He mentioned the concern when he publicly opposed the sweeping anti-immigration law legislators passed last year, known as House Bill 4156.
“If we start filling my jail with people arrested under 4156 on top of just your regular arrest, it's gonna shut our jail down pretty quick,” he said.
Who pays?
Taxpayers in Oklahoma will bear the brunt of local enforcement.
Ask Commissioner Tipton, though, and he doesn’t see it that way. He called whatever amount local jurisdictions pay for implementing immigration enforcement into their ranks “a cost savings measure” rather than a cost burden.
He said Oklahomans pay every day to house unauthorized immigrants in the state’s correction system already.
In his implementation plan for Operation Guardian, he said taxpayers shell out about $36,000 a day to house migrants.
”I don't look at it as being a cost to our citizens. It's letting law enforcement do the job they need to be able to do to make us safer,” he said. “And in the end, it's going to save us money.”
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