ICE, immigration and local response
Reporting on the reach and impact of immigration enforcement in Pittsburgh and across Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Springdale Borough’s partnership with ICE has brought headaches, but records obtained from other area governments by Pittsburgh’s Public Source suggest that working with the federal agency can involve rewards, too.
On the morning of Feb. 10, a Springdale police officer rode with a federal agent through the Allegheny Valley borough, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records.
Spotting a parked white Jeep, they ran the license plate and discovered it belonged to Randy Cordova Flores, a Peruvian man who arrived in the United States without documentation three years earlier. ICE records filed in federal court note he had no criminal record.
The ICE agent and officer watched as Cordova Flores left his home alone, entered the Jeep and pulled away. Soon, the law enforcement partners pulled him over for a “window obstruction.” The Springdale officer approached the vehicle, identified Cordova Flores, and then at least six agents arrested him. Cordova Flores has been held at the Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center since that day.
The arrest may have made the Springdale Borough Police Department “operational,” in ICE terms, potentially opening up a package of financial incentives, “performance awards” and reimbursements from the federal government. An agency is considered “operational” once it makes an arrest for ICE.
Since the second Trump administration began its immigration crackdown 16 months ago, 86 law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania have active agreements to cooperate with ICE under the agency’s 287(g) program, which delegates some immigration enforcement functions to local police.
In Allegheny County, those include the police departments of Stowe Township and Springdale Borough, while others, including Robinson, Munhall and Coraopolis, terminated agreements with ICE after public scrutiny. Some municipalities — Bellevue, McCandless and Swissvale, as well as Allegheny County — passed resolutions prohibiting local police from cooperating with ICE. The City of Pittsburgh is considering similar legislation.
Prior to the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and significant increases to ICE’s budget, there were no financial incentives for the 287(g) program, which first emerged in the wake of 9/11 as a force multiplier for the newly formed ICE, said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has researched 287(g) issues for 20 years.
Pittsburgh’s Public Source filed Right-to-Know Law record requests with numerous law enforcement agencies in Southwestern Pennsylvania that have active or terminated 287(g) agreements to better understand how the program is playing out across the region.
Limited records released by Springdale Borough indicate the borough began receiving invitations to “payroll submission template training” meetings from ICE for the month after the Feb. 10 arrest.
Springdale Borough denies that there are additional records and Public Source is appealing to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records. Most other departments, though, provided records and some discussed the program. Here’s what we learned.
Butler County sheriff bills ICE for $194,500
In January, after Butler County sheriff’s deputies were filmed detaining people alongside ICE agents at a construction site in Cranberry, the sheriff’s office received an inquiry from KDKA-TV. That set off a string of emails reflecting how Sheriff Mike Slupe has sought to change the public perception of his office’s cooperation with ICE.
“We are all getting a bad reputation over this because of a narrative that is being spewed. I lost votes in the last election and I have people calling my partnership disgusting and shameful,” Slupe wrote to a field office director at ICE on Jan. 29, according to records obtained through public records requests. Slupe asked the director, Joe Gigliotti, if the agency would support a media statement that might “bring more support from the community.”
“They need to know we are upholding the LAW and what we are doing does not affect them in any negative way, only positively by making our communities/county safer by removing the illegal people,” Slupe wrote. “Oh, and by the way, I really don’t care about those who feel negatively about what we are doing.”
Gigliotti later wrote back that the Butler County Sheriff’s Office “is integral to our successful operations in Butler County,” and helped prepare a statement “in response to the overall national ‘anti-ICE’ narrative,” to share with the Butler Eagle. The release included mugshots of people arrested by ICE, and noted that the Sheriff’s Office had arrested 36 people since partnering with ICE under the 287(g) program.
That figure has now reached as high as 71 arrests, Slupe said in a recent interview.
“Some of them fight, some of them run, at the end of the day they’re all illegal, and they’re still deportable,” he said.
Slupe recently submitted for $194,500 in financial incentives from ICE, including $100,000 for new equipment. The money was not tied to the number of arrests the office has made for ICE, he said.
Slupe said that 13 of his 36 deputies, including himself, had received 40 hours of “in-depth training” to participate in the partnership with ICE and to be designated as “task force officers.”
The operations, he said, are targeted. “It’s a lot of background checking. It’s a lot of intelligence gathering,” Slupe explained. He said his officers typically work eight-hour shifts for ICE, often meeting up with federal agents to seek people the agency targets, and sometimes transporting people detained to the ICE field office on the South Side. The sheriff’s office has been “operational” since November.
Some of the people detained under the partnership have been working on newly built homes or had made a traffic violation, Slupe said. “They’re all legally approached,” Slupe said, “and then at some point they can’t speak English, they have no drivers license. Maybe they have identification, maybe not. Then our ICE partners come out.
“The ICE agents that we work with are highly trained, highly professional and highly disciplined.”
Harris, speaking generally and not specifically of the Butler County sheriff, said partnering with ICE can bring departments needed funds, but also risks “a very substantial reputational hit.” Beyond the political considerations for elected sheriffs and other local officials, Harris said, signing on to the 287(g) program also carries a risk of inciting “fear, distrust and a cutoff from communication” with the public.
ICE, Harris said, has no local constituency, and “they just feel invulnerable and they just go at it. If you had any ties to any community that’s actually respected, that you actually felt sworn to serve, and that you were supposed to have ongoing relations with, you wouldn’t do this.”
“They got cash to throw around,” Harris said. “And they’re doing it.”
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to questions.
“I recognize that I lost votes in this past election because we are involved with ICE,” Slupe said.
“I’m a law-and-order sheriff,” Slupe said. “If there was not an incentive structure, I still feel it’s the right thing to do … I also think that it’s responsible and if we’re able to help bring money into the county, I think that’s a good thing.”
Washington County sheriff wooed with cash incentives
In early September, ICE shared a memo with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and other 287(g) partners regarding “new reimbursement opportunities” for local law enforcement agencies that partner with ICE under a “task force model.” That model provides training for local officers and allows local police to “identify and report suspected aliens not charged with crimes,” and to exercise “limited immigration authority on ICE-led task forces,” per the agency’s brochure.
The Sept. 2 memo from ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan stated local police are eligible for quarterly performance awards “based on the successful location of aliens provided by ICE.”
“Let’s seize this moment to strengthen our collaboration, enhance our capabilities, and deliver results that make a real difference,” the memo concludes. “The time to act is now, because together, we are unstoppable.”
Later emails from ICE officials stated that if an agency is “operational” before Oct. 1, it is eligible for $7,500 “per credentialed officer” and a $100,000 payment for vehicle purchases. Those that become “operational” after Oct. 1 are eligible for “up to 100 percent” of salary and benefits and a quarter of overtime costs “for officers who actively participate in the arrest(s) of individuals identified as ICE targets.”
The emails also note that ICE will forward reimbursement registration packets to local law enforcement “as they become operational and qualify for the reimbursement program.”
Records reviewed by Public Source do not indicate any transfer of funds between ICE and local 287(g) program partners.
In late October, an ICE official emailed Sheriff Anthony Andronas inquiring about an impending “30-day operation” with 287(g) partners. The operation, per the official, would include “some additional training” and arrests attributed to the office. “We will assign a few officers to your operation to assist, and the officers that you are able to assign each day would be participating with our officers to conduct operations.”
The records did not include a response by Andronas.
In a recent interview, Washington County’s Chief Deputy Sheriff Anthony Mosco said “we have not done a thing,” despite signing the 287(g) agreement last June.
“We have never had any run-ins [with ICE], we have not seen them. Our guys haven’t assisted them at all.”
Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.organd on Instagram @quinnglabicki.
Charlie Wolfson contributed reporting.
This story was fact-checked by Pam Smith.
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