Office of the Madison County Sheriff Criminal Division Building, at left, courthouse at right. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Deputies from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office may soon have the authority to collaborate on operations targeting immigrants through a new agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The office on July 2 signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE — which, if implemented, authorizes deputies to enforce aspects of immigration law. 

Samantha Field, a spokesperson for the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, said the agreement had not been received by the county’s county clerk nor had it been approved by the county’s board of supervisors. Field said that means the agreement is not yet official. 

Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood has been out of the office since Monday, when Central Current reached out to the county about the 287(g) agreement, Field said. Madison County is listed on ICE’s website among agencies that signed a 287(g) agreement. Field has said Hood will on Friday provide more clarity about the agreement. County Administrator Mark Scimone did not directly return a call from a Central Current reporter about the agreement, instead having Field follow up. 

“The Sheriff’s Office has been working on an agreement with ICE,” Field said in a statement. “However, that agreement has not been approved at this time by the Board of Supervisors.”

Field did not respond when asked why ICE claims the agreement has already been signed, and did not explain when asked why the board needed to approve the contract.

If the agreement is approved, Madison County will become the first Central New York sheriff’s office to sign such an agreement. Previously, the nearest law enforcement agency to sign an agreement was Broome County, in New York’s Southern Tier. 

ICE counts Madison County as one of 826 agencies who have signed on to help ICE. Such agreements have been used by the federal government to involve local law enforcement in Trump’s plan to target undocumented people and documented non-citizens in the United States and deport them. 

In Madison County’s case, it signed a “warrant service officer” agreement, one of the three types of agreements allowed under 287(g), according to ICE’s website. The program was created in 2019 and allows deputies to serve and execute administrative immigration warrants on people who are in custody at the county’s jail. 

Cars parked behind office of the Madison County Sheriff Criminal Division Building in Wampsville. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Critics of such agreements, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, have argued that 287(g) agreements fuel mass deportations, distract police from solving local crimes and stoke fear among immigrants. 

More so than most New York counties, Madison is farm country. Some of the county’s farms rely on migrant labor. The county ranks in the top third of all New York counties in acres of farmland, number of farms, percentage of overall land that is farmland and farm sales, according to a report from the state comptroller’s office.  

Nationally, areas with farms that rely on migrant labor have been flashpoints for ICE. Trump recently said ICE would pause its targeting of farms, before reversing his position days later. ICE continues to raid farms around the country.

Around the time the Madison County Sheriff’s Office was listed as signing on with ICE, President Donald Trump and Congress pumped ICE with more resources. Trump’s recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave ICE another $170 billion, making the agency the highest funded law enforcement agency in the country’s history. 

“They have a lot going on, and they’re trying to get, in my opinion, the worst of the worst that are a public safety issue out of the country right at this time,” Hood said of ICE on a county-run podcast. 

Recent reporting by the Investigative Post in Buffalo suggests ICE has been arresting community members with no criminal histories and those with criminal histories were already in prison. A recent study by the Cato Institute found 65% of ICE’s detainees have not committed any crimes. Of the remaining 35%, more than 9 in 10 were classified as nonviolent offenders.

Hood has acknowledged in a February interview with CNY Central on the county-run podcast that undocumented migrants did not contribute to a statistically significant amount of crime in Madison County but affirmed his eagerness to support federal law enforcement operations.

Hood, a former Syracuse police gang detective and Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office investigator, detailed his contact with ICE on a February episode of the Milk House, a podcast produced by the Madison County government.

“I’ve had regular meetings with them, probably within the last three weeks. I’ve had numerous meetings with agents. We met with them down in Washington, DC, also, with the National Sheriff Conference with Tom Homan,” Hood said. “They kind of laid out their plan as far as what they’re going to do in the initial stages of this.”

Madison County joins Broome, Nassau, Niagara, and Rensselaer Counties as the first local agencies in New York to affix themselves to ICE’s yoke through a 287(g) agreement, according to a spreadsheet available on ICE’s website.

Those agreements differ in title — between “task force model,” “jail enforcement model,” and “warrant service officer”— and specific power authorization, but each agreement grants local agencies some authority to aid and enforce immigration operations. 

Madison County signed a “warrant service officer” 287(g) agreement, which will allow its sheriff’s deputies to execute immigration warrants on people in the sheriff’s office’s custody.

This kind of agreement is sometimes called a “287(g)-lite”, because it tends to require less training and gives limited responsibilities to local law enforcement agencies. Under such an agreement, deputies would have the power to serve an immigration warrant and detain a person they would have released before the agreement. 

New York judges in 2018 ruled that it is illegal for local police to make immigration arrests and honor ICE’s detention requests — but that ruling was made when a local department did not have a 287(g) agreement in place. The judges specifically did not rule on the legality of 287(g) agreements in New York. 

Office of the Madison County Sheriff Criminal Division Building. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Rubin Danberg Biggs, a legal fellow with NYCLU, believes the ruling could place 287(g) agreements beyond the purview of state law. NYCLU in June sued Nassau County over its 287(g) agreement with ICE — though any ruling may not affect all agreements, only those that are ruled to violate state law. 

New York State Attorney General Letitia James has advised law enforcement agencies not to enter into 287(g) agreements because of the ruling in Suffolk County. She’s also argued the agreement can detract local police from serving their communities — and strain relationships with vulnerable community members.

The agreements could weaken “the willingness of victims and witnesses to come forward and cooperate — and draw resources away from essential local law enforcement functions,” James wrote.

In past legislative sessions, state legislators have considered a bill called New York For All, which aims to limit local law enforcement’s collaboration with ICE. 

NYCLU argues the legislation would effectively ban and prevent 287(g) agreements, and would also limit ICE’s access to New York State’s databases. Other states — including New Jersey, California, and Illinois — have already passed similar legislation.

Danberg Biggs agrees with James’ arguments. He said the agreements make communities less safe by redirecting local law enforcement agencies’ resources away from their core missions to protect and serve their localities.

Downstate, the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office signed the same style agreement with ICE as Madison County. Danberg Biggs said NYCLU has documented examples of legal Nassau County residents who have said that they fear contacting local police, even when they are in danger, because of the 287(g) agreement. 

These people have told NYCLU they are afraid that they or their loved ones will be interrogated or arrested based on their immigration status, said Danberg Biggs.

“That’s folks who were immigrants, folks who have lawful status, folks who are undocumented,” said Danberg Biggs. “It’s folks who are citizens and who were born in this country, who all feel afraid of the power that local police are purporting to wield on behalf of ICE.”

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...