5. Department of Homeland Security · Minor
Issue a memo barring denial of 287(g) applications without good cause
Printed page 153 5. Department of Homeland Security
“287(g) program. Issue a memo prohibiting any jurisdiction that applies from being denied access to the program unless good cause is shown.”
What has happened
- Partially done
No memo has been published setting a good-cause standard for denying a 287(g) application, but the access barrier the memo would remove is demonstrably not being applied: DHS announced on 2025-09-17 that 287(g) agreements had grown from 135 to 1,001 - a 641 percent increase across 40 states - and ICE's deputy director used the announcement to tell "all state and local law enforcement agencies" to sign one, adding full federal reimbursement of participating officers' salaries from 2025-10-01. Achieved by other means, in the language of playbook section 3: the object of the ask is open access to the program, and access is open. `partial` rather than `done` because the memo itself, which is what would bind a future administration, does not exist.
- Attempted
A memo about 287(g) denials exists after all, and it does the opposite of what the Quote asks in form while doing what the Quote wants in effect. Acting Director Caleb Vitello's memorandum *Suspension of the 287(g) Program Advisory Board* suspends the PAB "and its governance structure effective immediately", stating the purpose in terms: "This will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in a timely manner." The PAB, created in April 2009, existed "to evaluate 287(g) Program applicants and submit recommendations to the ICE Director on the suitability of a state or local law enforcement agency (LEA) for participation". Under the memorandum "the authority to approve or deny a State or local LEA's request to participate in the 287(g) program rests solely with the ICE Director", with requests routed directly to the Director's office. So the body that screened applicants is gone and the access barrier with it — but no good-cause standard replaces it: denial is now wholly at the Director's discretion, which is the reverse of the constraint the Quote asks be written down. Moved nearby, in the §3b sense: real, dated, Primary, on this ask's own object, and satisfying neither limb.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
One negative search covered this ask with the others on pages 151–158 of Chapter 5. Neither ICE’s 287(g) program page nor DHS’s press index carries a memorandum on denial standards, and no Federal Register document in the window addresses 287(g) participation criteria.
Reviewed 2026-09-06. The instrument had been recorded as unlocated, because ICE’s 287(g) page (ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287g) carries only the participating-agency list. It was looked for in the wrong place. ICE’s FOIA reading room (ice.gov/foia/library) publishes its policy memoranda and has a keyword search that answers a nonsense query with an explicit no-match. A search for “287” returns nine documents, of which exactly one is in the window: the PAB suspension memorandum, now the first event above. There is still no memorandum setting a good-cause standard for denial, and the reading room is the index that would carry one.
EO 14159 section 11 is the upstream directive: the Secretary is to authorize state and local officers “to the maximum extent permitted by law” and may structure each agreement “in the manner that provides the most effective model” for that jurisdiction. Read together with the 1,001 agreements, the practical answer to the Quote is yes; the instrument it asks for is still absent.
A boundary call: a reviewer applying “progress is measured on this ask” strictly would hold this at not started because the ask names a memo.
Overlap: #361 (p. 150) is the Requires-Congress ask that Congress authorize state and local enforcement, attempted.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- 287(g) program access memo
- ID
- 381