More than a dozen of the state’s police agencies, large and small, are open to helping federal immigration agents. But few have formal policies to guide such decisions, and officials say their focus is on local policing.
President Donald Trump intends to deport millions of immigrants, starting with ramping up arrests. To do that, his administration invoked a nearly three-decade-old law that, the American Immigration Council says, allows local police to be deputized to enforce federal immigration laws.
Two Republican state lawmakers filed legislation that would make Kentucky police help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, if passed, could force Louisville Metro Police to drop a policy that restricts its cooperation with ICE.
The potential for local officers to become de facto immigration agents worries advocates for civil liberty and immigrant rights.
The ACLU of Kentucky’s executive director, Amber Duke, said local police often have limited resources and emphasized that immigration enforcement is the U.S. government’s jurisdiction.
She told KyCIR: “We have law enforcement agencies across the state which have been saying for years: ‘We are under-resourced and we are understaffed. We cannot meet the demands of our local community to provide a base level of service with the current staffing that we have.’ So I think adding to their plate (by) also taking on doing federal immigration enforcement is an inappropriate mandate.”
Several Kentucky police officials said they have to take their available resources into account when outside agencies ask for help.
The commonwealth is home to more than 350 law enforcement agencies strewn across 120 counties, including the state police. We reached out to over 40 agencies — about 60% responded — to learn how local police may cooperate with ICE and what rules they’ll follow.
None said they’d refuse to work with ICE, but few have a policy to guide the sensitive and volatile job of helping take people into federal custody for violating immigration rules.
None of the agencies told the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting they have a formal arrangement to partner with ICE, either through what’s known as a 287(g) agreement or any other federal initiative.
In the neighboring states of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, ICE data show only Tennessee has any 287(g) agreements — for the Greene and Knox County sheriff’s offices.
The Republican governors for Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia are pushing hard for law enforcement in their states to help ICE.
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is more guarded. He recently said his administration, which includes the state police, will evaluate helping ICE on a case-by-case basis. A state police spokesperson directed KyCIR to file an open records request to get a copy of the agency’s policy for working with external partners.
The Louisville Metro Police Department revised its policy on immigration enforcement in 2017 after a KyCIR investigation revealed LMPD helped federal immigration agents make house calls on local residents.
The department now restricts how LMPD handles ICE’s requests for assistance. Officers can’t make contact with a person solely to help ICE and they can only detain someone if they’re wanted on a court-issued criminal warrant or there’s probable cause to charge them with a crime under Kentucky laws.
LMPD spokesperson John Bradley told KyCIR LMPD policy and Louisville Metro Government ordinances “define any involvement we have or will have with ICE.”
A city ordinance also adopted in the wake of KyCIR’s 2017 investigation bans public safety officials from joining 287(g) agreements with ICE and restricts when city employees can ask someone about their immigration status.
The ordinance says public safety officials generally can aid ICE only if there’s a court-authorized warrant or when ICE “articulates a reasonable suspicion of a risk of violence or an emergency situation when there is a clear danger to the public.”
St. Matthews Police Department Chief Barry Wilkerson said they’d assist ICE, if asked, to the extent necessary to protect public safety, but they won’t do things like going into schools looking for immigrants to detain.
“Are we going to be actively involved with them searching for people? No. That’s not what we do,” he said.
Nor does he expect ICE to seek such assistance.
“Rounding up undocumented individuals just because they’re undocumented – I don’t think we’ll ever be asked to do that,” Wilkerson said.
With limited resources, several Kentucky police officials said they have to consider how helping with an outside operation could hurt their agency’s ability to cover its regular duties.
Middletown Police Department Chief Robert Herman told KyCIR he leads a small agency with 22 officers and staff.
If another agency asks for aid, Herman and other officials said they look at their available resources and whether the situation relates to local residents’ security.
“Our focus is on local policing,” he said.
In Kentucky’s second-largest city, the Lexington Police Department doesn’t have a policy that specifically addresses ICE.
Why local police will consider ICE requests case-by-case
One of the president’s new, anti-immigration executive orders urges the expanded use of 287(g) agreements.
A 2021 Congressional Research Service report says operating under 287(g) agreements added new expenses for local law enforcement. It also says the U.S. Department of Justice found certain agencies with 287(g) agreements racially profiled people.
Beyond 287(g) agreements, a January announcement by U.S. Department of Homeland Security leadership aims to more directly involve state and local police in immigration enforcement.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in several states are trying to ensure police will cooperate with immigration authorities. Tennessee’s Republican-led legislature, for example, voted last month to create a state division to support immigration enforcement and to incentivize local law enforcement to join the 287(g) program.
In Kentucky, several Republican lawmakers are sponsoring legislation that would stop local governments from prohibiting or limiting their sheriff’s offices and police departments’ cooperation with ICE.
For a majority of the departments that talked to KyCIR, officials indicated they’d help ICE as needed and when feasible, just like they do for other law enforcement agencies.
At the Elizabethtown Police Department, public affairs officer Chris Denham said they evaluate the legality of any outside request for assistance and determine how they can best assist.
“Some requests are more labor intensive, while others are as simple as requiring only a uniformed officer and a marked vehicle,” he said. “Regardless, we make every reasonable effort to support all law enforcement partners – federal, state, or local."
Boone County Sheriff Michael Helmig “fully endorses President Trump’s immigration plan,” spokesperson Major Philip Ridgell told KyCIR.
"We value our longstanding relationship with many of our federal partners in upholding Boone County’s reputation as a safe place to live, work and raise a family. Having said that, we would analyze and evaluate each operational plan upon receiving a formal request from ICE,” he said. “It is important that we understand the operational objectives to ensure that our assistance meets the needs as well as the scope of the mission."
Boone County is also home to the state’s only full-time immigration detention facility.
In Eastern Kentucky, Chief Deputy Bert Hatfield of the Pike County Sheriff’s Office said immigration isn’t a big issue, mainly because not many immigrants live there.
Multiple officials noted that enforcing U.S. immigration rules generally falls outside the jurisdiction of local law enforcement.
“We are not involved in enforcing federal law, only the laws of the commonwealth of Kentucky,” Sgt. Jordan Brown of the Shively Police Department said.
Officer Ronnie Ward, of the Bowling Green Police Department, told KyCIR: "We, as the police department, don’t have the training or the tools to identify a person who may be in Bowling Green illegally.”
Duke, with the ACLU of Kentucky, said she’s concerned local law enforcement can’t keep up with what the latest immigration rules are and which new Trump policies are blocked in court.
“We try to simplify it and say that it's so simple … Like, ‘You either should be here or you shouldn't be here.’ But it's true that you could have a temporary protected status one day, and then an executive order comes down and all of a sudden that status that you had is in limbo,” she said. “So it's very complicated and nuanced.”
How Trump’s crackdown on immigrants will ultimately work, and what role Kentucky police may play in it, is yet to be seen. For now, the ACLU of Kentucky is giving out ‘Know Your Rights’ pamphlets to community members, including immigrants in the U.S. without legal status, about what they can do if contacted by police or immigration officers.
“We're trying to get that information out so that people know that they do, in fact, have rights in those situations,” Duke said. “There's a lot of fear right now. There's a lot of misinformation.”
What UK, UofL say about their police departments
Colleges could become a new focus for ICE operations after the Trump administration dropped a policy last month that kept immigration officials from arresting people at schools, churches and hospitals.
Kentucky’s two biggest colleges, the University of Louisville and University of Kentucky, both have on-campus police departments.
UofL spokesperson John Karman referred KyCIR to its new guidance that says if immigration officials request information on a student or patient there, such requests should be sent to the university police.
Then, the police will work with the Office of University Counsel to ensure federal privacy rules that protect student and patient data are followed. For example, the guidance says, schools generally can’t disclose student records without “a lawfully issued subpoena, judicial warrant, court order, or written consent.”
As for UK, spokesperson Dani Jaffe said in an email that they aren’t aware of any “requests or actions” from ICE but they’re reviewing various executive orders and will “monitor the impact” of any federal directives.
