One of the most alarming developments in American immigration policy is not necessarily mass deportation itself or the increasingly aggressive actions of ICE, but the fact that all of this is happening in a way that is becoming steadily less transparent. While Donald Trump and Republican leadership have elevated the fight against immigration into a central political issue, enforcement is becoming increasingly decentralized, and local police departments, sheriff’s offices, county jails, and smaller agencies are being given roles in ICE operations that the public often barely understands at all. Growing concern is spreading throughout the American press and among civil rights organizations that immigration enforcement is now frequently operating as an “invisible system,” in which the public does not clearly know who is assisting ICE, when, on the basis of what information, and under what type of cooperation arrangement.
At an American Community Media press briefing, experts examined how information can be obtained, how the press and civil society organizations can fulfill their oversight role under such conditions, and how citizens can receive information in the interest of accountability. The situation is further complicated by the fact that ICE activities are intentionally being shielded from laws and oversight mechanisms because, under normal legal standards, many of these activities could not be carried out in this way. Participants in the discussion included David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition; Thadeus Greenson, FAC’s press education specialist; Elizabeth Clemons, training and curriculum director at MuckRock; and Austin Kocher, a researcher at Syracuse University.
One of the central problems is that documents, agreements, arrest records, and communications concerning cooperation between ICE and local authorities are often incomplete, released only after long delays, or not accessible at all. According to numerous American journalists and civil rights organizations, monitoring ICE operations at the local level has become nearly impossible without lengthy lawsuits and public records requests. This has become especially contentious in California, where several legal actions have already been launched against state and local agencies for withholding public information.
One of the key players in this battle is the First Amendment Coalition, an organization defending freedom of the press and free speech. According to its legal director David Loy, democratic accountability depends on the public knowing exactly how local law enforcement agencies cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Loy argues that when government agencies refuse or delay releasing records, this is not a simple administrative problem, but an obstruction of public oversight. One of the core principles of the American constitutional system is supposed to be that citizens and the press can monitor the exercise of power. Immigration enforcement, however, is increasingly becoming an area where that oversight is weakening or disappearing altogether.
The growing role of local police departments and sheriff’s offices is especially significant because ICE alone does not have enough personnel or infrastructure to carry out a policy of mass deportation. As a result, it relies increasingly on local partners. In some counties, local jails automatically notify ICE when undocumented immigrants are taken into custody. Elsewhere, agencies use shared databases or joint operations. In many cases, however, the exact details of these cooperation agreements are not public.
According to Thadeus Greenson, one of the biggest problems is that journalists often do not even know what documents exist in the first place. Responses to records requests are frequently incomplete, agencies point fingers at one another, and local offices often apply different standards in handling records. Greenson says that as a result, journalism increasingly becomes investigative work in the purest sense: the task is not only obtaining information, but first discovering where the information exists at all and in what form.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that ICE operations are deliberately decentralized in many respects. One of the Trump administration’s central strategies was to push as much immigration enforcement as possible down to the local level. Politically, this also benefits the federal government because it partially shifts responsibility onto local agencies. In practice, this means the system operates very differently in different parts of the country. Some cities and states attempt to limit cooperation with ICE, while elsewhere local authorities actively assist immigration raids and deportations.
There is now considerable data and investigative reporting showing how dramatically ICE has expanded its network, how local police have been empowered, and how detention infrastructure has grown during Trump’s second term. The picture, however, remains intentionally fragmented and difficult to track, which itself has become one of the central criticisms of the system. The most important development has been the explosive expansion of the so-called 287(g) program. Under this system, local police officers, sheriff’s offices, and county jails effectively function as extensions of ICE. Following Trump’s January 2025 executive order, the program expanded dramatically. While approximately 135 to 200 such cooperation agreements existed at the beginning of 2025, by the spring of 2026 there were already more than 1,400 active agreements operating across 40 states.
This means local police officers and sheriffs can check immigration status, process ICE notifications, hold individuals for ICE, and in some places even participate directly in immigration enforcement during street-level policing. Critics argue this has effectively created a decentralized immigration police force. According to the ACLU and several civil rights organizations, the system significantly increases the danger of racial profiling and destroys trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement.
The number of detainees has also risen dramatically. According to TRAC Immigration data, more than 60,000 people were being held in ICE detention in April 2026, while other organizations, including Freedom for Immigrants, estimated the number periodically exceeded 66,000. What is especially significant is that more than 70 percent of detainees have no criminal record. This fundamentally undermines the official narrative that ICE is primarily targeting “dangerous criminals.”
The deportation infrastructure has expanded visibly. New temporary and permanent detention centers have opened in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and other southern states. The most notorious is the so-called Florida Soft-Sided Facility South, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” by critics. It is a massive tent and container complex where between 1,300 and 1,800 people were held daily from late 2025 through the spring of 2026. Human rights organizations say serious abuses occurred there.
According to the Vera Institute, ICE has held detainees in nearly 1,500 different facilities in recent years, including county jails, privately operated detention centers, and temporary camps. This raises a critical question: if the goal is deportation, why is such a vast detention system necessary? Critics answer that the system no longer serves merely logistical purposes, but functions as deterrence, political theater, social control, and mass administrative pressure.
Many detainees remain confined for months or even years because there is nowhere to deport them, their home countries refuse to accept them back, their asylum claims are pending, or the system is simply overwhelmed. As a result, detention often ceases to be a temporary technical measure and instead becomes punishment itself.
It is also increasingly clear that the system is heavily privatized. A significant portion of ICE detention centers are operated by private companies that receive daily payments for each detainee. Critics argue this creates a financial incentive to increase detention numbers.
Large local protests have erupted against new detention centers, particularly in California, Illinois, Colorado, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. The protests are generally driven by secrecy, allegations of human rights abuses, overcrowding, inadequate medical care, and opposition from communities that do not want their cities or counties becoming part of the deportation machinery. The Washington Post recently reported, based on leaked ICE documents, that at least 1,460 violent incidents occurred inside detention facilities between 2024 and 2026, and the use of force increased by 37 percent during the first year of Trump’s second term.
The greatest problem, however, remains the lack of transparency. Many facilities refuse to release data, deny access to journalists, fail to report all incidents, and provide no clear accounting of how many people are being detained at a given time. The ICE system has effectively become a parallel detention infrastructure, much of it operating outside traditional public oversight. This is why obtaining records and mapping local cooperation agreements has become a central issue for journalists and civil rights organizations. Critics argue that the system is no longer simply an immigration enforcement apparatus, but an internal security structure receiving increasing power while becoming progressively less accountable.
According to Elizabeth Clemons of MuckRock, the lack of transparency has now become systemic. MuckRock assists journalists and civil society organizations in filing public records requests, and Clemons says immigration cases are especially difficult because obtaining relevant documents is extraordinarily challenging. Agencies often delay responses for months or years, release heavily redacted materials, or simply claim disclosure would interfere with law enforcement activities. Clemons argues, however, that this secrecy is not fundamentally about security, but politics: the less the public sees, the weaker accountability becomes.
Austin Kocher of Syracuse University and American University says tracking ICE operations has become one of the most difficult areas of research in America. Kocher studies immigration databases and deportation systems, and says one of the biggest problems is that the data are not only incomplete, but often intentionally confusing. ICE frequently uses different categories across different reports, making meaningful comparison difficult. Some information can only be obtained through litigation, while other data are simply not systematically collected by agencies at all.
According to Kocher, the American immigration system increasingly functions like a “black box.” The public sees political slogans and highly publicized raids, but has little understanding of how the system actually operates day to day. Yet the real stories often unfold at the local level: inside a county jail, within a sheriff’s office data-sharing arrangement, or through a police cooperation agreement.
The lack of transparency is not merely a legal or administrative problem, but directly affects people’s lives. Fear is growing within immigrant communities that local police effectively function as an extension of ICE. In many places this has led immigrants to avoid reporting crimes, seeking police assistance, or cooperating with law enforcement out of fear. The collapse of trust harms not only immigrants, but public safety overall.
The secrecy surrounding immigration enforcement is especially dangerous because one of the foundational principles of democratic systems is supposed to be that the state’s monopoly on force remains subject to public oversight. If deportations, detentions, and police cooperation agreements become increasingly difficult to track, the system gradually slips beyond democratic control. Many civil rights advocates argue that this is no longer simply about stricter immigration policy, but about the emergence of an enforcement apparatus that is increasingly opaque and increasingly difficult to hold accountable.
For this reason, the American press and civil society organizations are now trying not only to document the number of deportations, but to map the system itself. Who is cooperating with ICE? What data are being shared? Who is making decisions? What agreements exist behind the scenes? These questions are becoming increasingly important because as immigration enforcement becomes more decentralized, accountability increasingly depends on local journalists, researchers, and communities.
The debate is ultimately not only about immigration, but about how far state power can extend into invisibility within a democratic society. The growing secrecy surrounding cooperation between ICE and local police is, according to many critics, a warning sign: whenever the state exercises more and more power while providing less and less information about what it is doing, it signals the weakening of democratic oversight.
