ICE Wants to Buy Liability Insurance for Local Cops Who Make Immigration Arrests

ICE wants to pay for local cops' liability insurance, according to a planning document published Friday and first reported by the Associated Press.

The idea: subsidize insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability for state and local officers deputized under ICE's 287(g) program. Officers would buy the coverage themselves, then get reimbursed up to $250 a year, which ICE says is roughly what the policy would cost.

This isn't about criminal charges. Liability insurance like this covers civil stuff, legal fees, settlements, judgments, when an officer gets sued for something that happened on the job. If a cop breaks the law and gets prosecuted, insurance doesn't make that go away.

Why ICE Is Doing This

Local police departments have been joining ICE's task force program at a rapid clip. Nearly 1,600 agencies across 32 states now have 287(g) agreements, according to ICE data cited by the AP. That lets trained local officers interrogate, arrest, and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally.

Arrests through these partnerships jumped to an average of 3,000 a month in the first two months of 2026, according to ICE data provided to UC Berkeley's Deportation Data Project. Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia have been leading the charge, with state and local Republican officials pushing their departments to sign on.

But some departments have stayed on the sidelines, partly because their officers don't want the personal legal exposure that comes with immigration enforcement. ICE's insurance subsidy is aimed straight at that hesitation. Remove the risk, get more departments in.

ICE is looking to hire a contractor to handle outreach, training, and communications for the 287(g) program broadly. That contractor would also hire the insurance vendor and process reimbursements. ICE has asked industry players for feedback by Thursday. No timeline or cost estimate has been finalized yet.

The Pushback

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, is the most vocal critic on record. Bier told the AP the plan lets law enforcement dodge accountability entirely while doing ICE's arrest work.

"The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans' rights while helping ICE arrest people," Bier said. He's previously pushed Congress to make it easier, not harder, to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.

Bier's concern is noteworthy. Qualified immunity already makes it hard to sue individual officers. If ICE is now covering what little financial exposure remains, on top of covering pay, equipment, and vehicles for these partnerships, the argument is that local cops enforcing federal immigration law have basically zero skin in the game if something goes wrong on an arrest.

The counter-argument: liability insurance isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's standard practice across plenty of professions where lawsuits are a constant risk. Doctors, contractors, even journalists carry it. A $500,000 cap and a $250 reimbursement is modest, not some blank check. And if an officer commits actual misconduct that rises to criminal behavior, insurance doesn't cover that and doesn't stop a prosecutor from filing charges.

ICE had no comment when the AP asked about the plan.

What's Missing From the Coverage

Every outlet running this story—AP, The Independent, PBS, and the regional affiliates that picked up the wire copy—relied on the same planning document and the same Bier quote. None of them got ICE to explain who's actually pushing this internally, why $250 was chosen as the reimbursement figure, or what the projected cost to taxpayers looks like if adoption scales with the current 1,600-agency partner network. If ICE subsidizes insurance for even half those departments' officers, taxpayers are on the hook for a number nobody's put on paper yet.

Separately, ICE has been expanding enforcement at airports, arresting visa overstays at check-in counters and boarding gates in at least 15 airports, according to The New York Times, cited by the Daily Wire. That's a distinct operation from the insurance proposal, but it fits the same pattern: the Trump administration is pushing ICE to widen its net, and pushing local partners to help.

What Happens Next

ICE's public comment window on the insurance proposal closes Thursday. Whether the agency moves forward, and at what cost, remains unannounced. No congressional hearing or oversight review has been scheduled on the plan as of now. The remaining question is whether subsidizing insurance actually gets more departments to sign 287(g) agreements, or if it just makes existing partnerships cheaper to run for officers who were already going to participate.