A secretive memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was recently issued to local law enforcement partners, barring them from answering questions about their role in immigration enforcement. This new directive raises concerns over the increased entanglement between federal and local law enforcement and the transparency of public records during President Donald Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
Anonymous federal sources told The Florida Trib that a memo was emailed between April 19 and May 5 to hundreds of local agencies in Texas and Florida participating in the 287(g) program, which allows local officers to conduct certain immigration enforcement operations. The memo instructed participating agencies to contact ICE before responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for public records.
The directive also told agencies to consult ICE “particularly in situations when information sharing might otherwise take place, such as press conferences, press releases, media ride alongs, [and] social media postings,” according to the memo reviewed by the Trib. Because “information obtained or developed” by local law enforcement through participation in the 287(g) is “under the control of ICE,” the memo continues, documents cannot be released without prior approval, reports the Trib.
Such a policy could potentially cover operations that only tangentially involve immigration enforcement and conflicts with both federal and state laws designed to ensure the free flow of information necessary for law enforcement accountability and a functioning democracy. Local agencies that may otherwise have an incentive to earn public trust by communicating openly about law enforcement operations must now first assess ICE compliance and seek federal approval.
And that’s a huge problem considering just how entangled ICE and local law enforcement have become over the first year of Trump’s second term in office. While the Trib was only able to verify that the memo was sent to law enforcement agencies partnering with ICE in Texas and Florida, those agencies are only a fraction of the many 287(g) program agreements around the country, which may have also received this directive. The number of 287(g) agreements has drastically increased from just 135 participating agencies in January 2025 to over 1,700 in May 2026.
Reason reached out to both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to confirm or deny the existence of the memo and asked whether the agency was concerned that such a policy could run counter to existing freedom of information laws. In response, a DHS spokesperson responded that “coordination is required when…releasing sensitive 287(g)-related information….We are not going to disclose law enforcement sensitive intelligence.”
However, what qualifies as sensitive intelligence wasn’t clearly defined and may even include the memo itself, as “multiple law enforcement agencies across South Florida confirmed receiving the memo, but would not provide it to a reporter pending clearance from ICE,” reports the Trib.
“This is as unconstitutional as it gets, and the bottleneck of information and lack of transparency only allow these unconstitutional acts to proliferate,” Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney, told the Trib, who accused ICE of violating her clients’ due process rights with impunity.
Reason‘s own criminal justice reporter, C.J. Ciaramella, who regularly requests records under FOIA and state laws in the name of government accountability, received an email denying access to records about an immigration arrest in Pensacola, Florida, that took place last October. The denial, in part, cited the agency’s “service agreement” with ICE as prohibiting the Florida Highway Patrol from disclosing “any information relating to ICE aliens pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 236.6,” and directed Ciaramella to request records directly from ICE. The federal statute cited bars a person who “houses, maintains, provides services to, or otherwise holds any [immigrant] detainee on behalf of the [ICE]” from disclosing the name or other information relating to the detainee.
Both the statute and recent memo underscore a troubling trend: ICE operations have expanded massively throughout the country with little oversight or accountability.
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