Last Updated: May 30, 2025

Beginning on the campaign trail, President Trump pledged to make sweeping changes to the criminal legal system in the United States, changes he began implementing on his first day in office. Within hours of his inauguration, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to expand its use of the federal death penalty, instructed federal agencies to incarcerate transgender women in men’s prisons, and rescinded several Biden-era executive orders on policing and private prisons, among other things. These actions represent just a small fraction of the policies he proposed during his campaign, like deploying the National Guard to act in place of local police, expanding the types of crimes that are eligible for the death penalty, and launching civil rights investigations of prosecutors who ran on reform platforms in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. 

The president has the authority to make numerous changes to criminal legal policy and practice through executive order, administrative rule, grant funding, and litigation, but some of the policies President Trump proposed on the campaign trail would require significant legislative or judicial action. Throughout this brief, we have noted what action can be taken directly by the president and what levers he has to influence other branches and levels of government. 

Each section of this brief summarizes a different policy of the second Trump administration with data, research, and expert sources. The brief is not an up-to-the-minute accounting of every administrative action but instead a resource for journalists interested in digging deeper into the implications of the administration's criminal legal policy agenda. It will be updated regularly throughout the first 100 days of the administration as additional policy actions and proposals roll out. 

Table of Contents

I. Death Penalty

II. Privatization

III. The Laken Riley Act

IV. The Role of Local Police in Immigration Enforcement

Background

When former President Biden took office, one of his first actions was to issue an executive order instructing the Attorney General not to renew U.S. Department of Justice contracts with private prison companies. While this order resulted in the transfer of about 14,000 people from privately managed facilities to those managed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it did not affect contracts between private prison companies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the U.S. Marshals Service, both of which have much larger contracts with CoreCivic and Geo Group, the two largest private prison companies. 

Changes enacted by second Trump administration

At the federal level

On his first day in office, President Trump rescinded nearly 80 executive orders that were issued by the previous administration. Among those was Executive Order 14006, which eliminated the use of privately operated prison facilities by the U.S. Department of Justice. By rescinding the order, President Trump has cleared a path for the DOJ to resume contracting with private prison companies. While it is not yet known whether the Bureau of Prisons will enter into new contracts with these companies, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, previously lobbied on behalf of Geo Group. 

At the local or state level

President Trump’s executive order has no direct impact on state or local contracts with private prison companies. For more information on state use of private prisons, see this report from The Sentencing Project. 

Data on private prisons

• The Federal Bureau of Prisons currently maintains a regularly updated website with the total number of people incarcerated in federal prisons and the share of those people held in private facilities. The site can also be used to generate reports showing the number of people held in particular facilities, states, or regions. 
• The Brennan Center for Justice published an analysis of recent federal contracts with private prison companies, including through the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. 

Research on the impact of private prisons

• Private prisons create perverse incentives to incarcerate more people.
  • A 2020 study found that the use of private prisons leads to higher incarceration rates and longer sentences. These findings were particularly strong in jurisdictions with overcrowded public prisons and those with higher degrees of corruption.
  • Another study found that people sentenced to private prisons serve longer terms than those sentenced to public prisons, even after accounting for other differences between those groups. 

• Violence is more common in private prisons, against both incarcerated people and prison staff. 
  • A 2016 study by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice found that “in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable [public] institutions.”
  • An earlier report from the U.S. Department of Justice found that the rate of violence at private prisons was 38 percent higher than the rate at public prisons. 
• Some studies suggest private prisons may increase recidivism rates. 
  • While research on private prisons’ broader community safety outcomes is limited, studies from Minnesota and Oklahoma have found that recidivism rates were higher for people confined in private prisons compared to public prisons. 
• Private prisons do not result in cost savings for taxpayers. 
  • Despite paying prison staff less on average than those who are state employees and maintaining staffing ratios that result in more incarcerated people for every staff member, studies have shown mixed results, and a 2009 meta analysis by researchers at the University of Utah found that “[c]ost savings from privatizing prisons are not guaranteed and appear minimal.” 

Opportunities for reporting

• Check in on the federal prisons in your jurisdiction. With this executive order in place, federal officials may look to transfer people into private prisons so that they do not have to pay to repair deteriorating public facilities. The Justice Department’s Inspector General issued a scathing report about the state of federal facilities in 2024 after hundreds of deaths across the country. The year prior, the same watchdog reported that the 123 federal prisons in the country need roughly $2 billion worth of maintenance work and most are "aging and deteriorating." If there is a federal prison in your jurisdiction, what kind of condition is it in? Is there a history of conditions-related litigation? How are conditions in the private facility where people are relocated (especially given the finding that violence is more common in private prisons)? How far away will people be moved? How do their loved ones feel about the possibility of a transfer to a private prison?

• Broaden your coverage beyond just private prisons. Media coverage of privatization in the criminal legal system tends to focus on prisons, but there are a whole host of corporations that do business with the corrections industry in the U.S., including those that provide transportation, equipment, food, medical care, technology, communications, architectural services, and more. Worth Rises maintains a database of corporations contracting with corrections and immigrant detention.

• Follow the implementation of (and the fights against) new rules capping the amount private companies can charge people for prison calls. In 2023, President Biden signed the Martha Wright-Reed Act, allowing the Federal Communications Commission to limit the cost of phone calls from prisons and jails for the first time. The FCC’s changes are being fought in court: Attorneys General in 14 states are currently challenging them, saying that the caps on prices unfairly divert money away from prisons and jails. Follow all of these lawsuits, how price changes are being implemented in facilities in your community, and how Trump’s new FCC commissioner will handle the new regulations. 

• Investigate other money-makers for companies operating in prisons and jails. Some of these same telecommunication companies impacted by the new FCC rules sell or provide tablets – for entertainment, communication, or educational purposes – in jails and prisons. Many facilities are locked into multi-year contracts, either with tablets for sale or rent at a high price, or provided for “free” with the providers allowed to set their own prices for services (such as money transfers, music, and email) without state oversight. Incarcerated people also purchase many items in commissaries. The Appeal published a database of most prisons’ commissary lists, with the availability, price, and markup of products across several categories, including food, personal hygiene, and religious items. Investigate commissary costs in your local prisons and jails (with special attention paid to urgently needed items, like fans in the hot summer months) and the contracts between telecommunication companies and local jails/prisons (with special attention paid to new contract features like bundling). 

• Monitor how these policies overlap with the administration's immigration actions. The newly passed Laken Riley Act sets the stage for a dramatic increase in detention of undocumented people accused (not convicted) of a wide range of crimes, including shoplifting. There are roughly 40,000 people in ICE detention, and 90% of them are in private facilities. If President Trump signs the Laken Riley Act as expected, ICE estimated that they would need capacity to detain an additional 110,000 people. 

Experts on privatization

• Bianca Tylek is the Founder and Executive Director of Worth Rises, a national organization working to end the financial incentives for incarceration. Worth Rises has worked on issues ranging from the cost of phone calls in jails and private equity investments in prisons to unpaid prison labor and jail visitation bans. Previously, Bianca worked at the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union and co-founded College Way, a preparation program for students on Rikers Island interested in pursuing higher education upon their release. 

Background

During his campaign for president, Donald Trump pledged to initiate “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” To achieve such a goal would require the cooperation and involvement of state and local police departments. Many jurisdictions already cooperate with ICE, and, in fact, the vast majority of ICE arrests happened at jails and prisons even before Trump took office for a second time. However, the new administration has taken actions intended to further expand the role of local police in immigration enforcement by incentivizing cooperation with ICE and punishing jurisdictions that limit their role in detaining and deporting immigrants.

What are the ways in which states and localities may choose to engage or not in immigration enforcement? 

For most of U.S. history, state and local police had very little authority to enforce federal immigration law. This changed after the 9/11 attacks as federal officials enacted policies to facilitate state and local involvement in immigration enforcement operations. 

Below are some of the ways in which states and localities can choose to be active participants or limit their participation in immigration enforcement. It is not uncommon for jurisdictions that reject certain forms of cooperation, such as deputizing local police to enforce immigration laws, to cooperate with ICE in other ways. And some forms of cooperation aren’t discretionary at all. State and local governments are required to send the federal government the fingerprints of any person who is booked into jail, which allows ICE to identify noncitizens, issue detainer requests (see more on these requests below), and initiate enforcement actions. 

Cooperation:

• 287(g) agreements. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows state and local policing agencies to enter into formal agreements with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to perform certain functions of federal immigration agents. These agreements can take one of three forms: 1) the warrant service officer model which allows state and local police to serve immigrants in their jails with immigration warrants, 2) the jail enforcement model which allows state and local police to question people in jail about their immigration status and to hold people for up to 48 hours after they otherwise would have been released so that ICE can take custody of them, and 3) the task force model which allows state and local police to question, arrest, and detain people they suspect of violating immigration laws while they are performing their duties in the community. The task force model was suspended in 2012 but recently revived by the Trump administration. To learn more, see this explainer from the American Immigration Council and another from The Miami Herald. 
• Renting jail space to ICE. Local governments regularly enter into agreements with state and federal agencies to rent their jail space in exchange for a per diem reimbursement. ICE relies heavily on these agreements for its detention capacity. In fact, local jails are the most common facility used by ICE. To learn more, see this explainer from the Vera Institute for Justice. 
• Operation Lone Star. Texas Governor Greg Abbott initiated a suite of policies in 2021, referred to as Operation Lone Star, targeting migrants crossing the Texas/Mexico border. These policies include 1) sending state troopers and National Guard soldiers to the border, 2) ordering state troopers to arrest migrants who cross private property for trespassing, and 3) busing migrants from Texas to Democratically-controlled cities across the country. For more on Operation Lone Star, see this explainer from The Texas Tribune. 

Noncooperation:

• State and local governments across the country have adopted a wide range of policies intended to limit their involvement in immigration enforcement. These policies (often referred to as “sanctuary laws”) take many forms but frequently restrict local police from asking about a person’s immigration status or prohibit jurisdictions from participating in the 287(g) program or renting jail space to ICE. One of the most common policies restricts local police from honoring detainer requests from ICE (non-binding requests for state or local police to hold a person for up to 48 hours beyond the time they would have otherwise been released so that ICE can take custody of them). Some jurisdictions prohibit this practice entirely, while others choose to cooperate only in certain circumstances, such as when the person has been convicted of a violent offense. To learn more, see this explainer from the American Immigration Council.     

What are the changes enacted by the second Trump administration? 

Since taking office, the Trump administration has taken several actions intended to expand state and local involvement in immigration enforcement by, among other things, incentivizing participation in the 287(g) program, threatening to withhold federal funds and take legal action against jurisdictions and government officials that have adopted “sanctuary” policies, and granting blanket authority to state and local police agencies that want to enforce federal immigration law. Below are some of the specific actions taken by administration officials. 

• President Trump signed an executive order that:
  • Instructs DHS to enter into 287(g) agreements with more state and local police departments. Since issuing the EO, several states and localities have passed legislation requiring local cooperation or establishing new agreements with ICE. The administration has revived a model of 287(g) agreement that authorizes state and local police to question and arrest people in the community that they suspect of violating federal immigration law. (Other 287(g) models only allow this type of activity to take place in jails.) This task force model was prevalent in the 2000s but suspended in 2012 after multiple investigations and lawsuits alleging widespread abuse and racial discrimination by local police. / 1 /  / 2 /  / 3 /
    • See this map from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center to identify jurisdictions that have recently adopted 287(g) agreements with ICE, and take a look at examples of new agreements with state-level agencies in Texas, Montana, Florida, Idaho, and Oklahoma. ICE also maintains a map of these agreements. 
  • Directs DOJ and DHS to identify jurisdictions that have adopted “sanctuary” policies, restrict their access to federal funding, and take legal action against jurisdictions they believe are interfering with federal immigration law.
  • Directs DOJ and DHS to establish joint Homeland Security Task Forces in every state to “ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States.” 
  • For more on the executive order and its impact, see this explainer from the Immigrant Defense Project.
    
• Acting Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo to federal prosecutors that asserts “[t]he Supremacy Clause and other authorities require state and local actors to comply with the Executive Branch’s enforcement initiatives” and that “[f]ederal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests[.]” This guidance implies that government officials and non-governmental organizations could be held criminally liable for adopting or implementing “sanctuary” policies or providing assistance to undocumented immigrants. In response, some states are now considering legislation challenging the authority of local governments to adopt “sanctuary” policies. These laws would criminalize failure to comply with federal immigration law and allow prosecutors to seek felony convictions and prison sentences for sheriffs and other government officials who do not honor ICE detainer requests. See a description of proposed legislation in Iowa here. 
• Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo that: 
  • Withholds DOJ funding from “sanctuary” jurisdictions. 
  • Pauses all grants to non-governmental organizations that “support or provide services to removable or illegal aliens.” 
  • Instructs DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to “identify state and local laws, policies, and practices that facilitate violations of federal immigration laws or impede lawful federal immigration operations” and “take legal action to challenge such laws, policies, or practices.” 
  • For more on this memo and its impact, see this explainer from Just Security. 
• Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamine Huffman issued a finding of “mass influx of aliens” that authorizes state and local police to act as federal agents for the purposes of carrying out federal immigration law. Federal law typically requires DHS to enter into a written agreement with any state or local agency to which it delegates authority (e.g. 287(g) agreements), but this finding could allow state and local police departments to engage in immigration enforcement without those agreements and the training and oversight of procedures and detention standards that they require. For more on the “mass influx” declaration, see this explainer from the American Immigration Council. 
• At the end of April, President Trump signed another executive order targeting “sanctuary” jurisdictions. It refers to “sanctuary” policies as a “lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law,” claiming they violate federal criminal law and could be prosecuted as obstruction of justice, “unlawfully harboring or hiring illegal aliens,” conspiracy against the United States, or even racketeering. The executive order requires the Attorney General to compile and publish a list of “sanctuary” jurisdictions within 30 days and notify those jurisdictions they are in violation of federal law. The order further directs the Attorney General to pursue enforcement and legal action against jurisdictions that “remain in defiance of Federal law” and directs the head of each executive branch agency to coordinate with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget on the suspension or termination of federal grants and contracts to “sanctuary” jurisdictions. These claims will be challenged in the courts, which have “repeatedly held that the Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from compelling states and localities to participate in immigration enforcement.”

Data on local police involvement in immigration enforcement

• ICE currently provides data on active and pending 287(g) agreements. Between December 2024 and April 2025 at the time of this writing, the number of 287(g) agreements between ICE and state or local law enforcement agencies more than tripled, increasing from 135 in 21 states to 444 in 38 states. More than half of this growth (178 new agreements) is from task force model agreements that allow state and local police to question people about their immigration status in the community. 
• ICE currently provides data on the number of people detained for immigration violations by the type of facility in which they are being held. From the end of Fiscal Year 2024 to April 2025 at the time of this writing, the number of people detained for immigration violations increased 27% from 37,684 to 47,892. 
• The Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts annual surveys of local jails and publishes data on the number of people detained in local jails, including the number of people being held for ICE and the share of jails in each state that are operating at more than 100% of their rated capacity. 
• TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) maintains data on immigration detention, court, and prosecutions, among many other things. 
• Detention Watch Network regularly publishes updates on the conditions of immigration detention facilities, including local jails. 

Research on local police involvement in immigration enforcement

As documented in the section of this brief focused on the Laken Riley Act, immigration does not lead to higher crime rates. Research has also shown that detention causes physical, mental, and economic harm to people who are detained and their families. For these reasons alone, increased immigration enforcement is likely to worsen, rather than enhance, community safety. Research specific to the impact of local police involvement in immigration enforcement has also found that:  

Local involvement in immigration enforcement does not reduce crime and may in fact increase it. 

• One study using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey found that entering into 287(g) task force agreements increased the risk of violent victimization for a community, whereas anti-detainer policies had no significant impact on violent victimization risk. 
• In another study, the Cato Institute found no causal relationship between apprehensions through the 287(g) program and measures of crime rates or police clearances in North Carolina. 

“Sanctuary” policies, on the other hand, may improve community safety. 

• A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “sanctuary” policies reduce deportations of people with no criminal convictions by half and have no measurable effect on crime. 
• Research conducted by the Center for American Progress found “there are, on average, 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties” even after controlling for other factors.  
• Another study found that “both property crime and violent crime decreased more in sanctuary counties than non-sanctuary counties, net of other predictors of crime.” 

“Sanctuary” policies strengthen local economies. 

• The same study from the Center for American Progress found that jurisdictions with “sanctuary” policies have higher median household incomes, less poverty, less reliance on public assistance, and higher labor force participation than non-”sanctuary” jurisdictions. On average, median household income is $4,353 higher in counties that do not honor ICE detainers than in counties that do.  

Detaining immigrants for ICE is associated with higher levels of overcrowding in local jails. 

• One study found that immigration detention significantly worsens jail conditions and reduces the safety for incarcerated people regardless of immigration status. 

Opportunities for reporting

• Cover the about-face from police associations. Both the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Major Cities Chiefs Association previously issued statements categorically decrying the role of local police in immigration enforcement, stating that “state and local law enforcement should not be involved in the enforcement of civil immigration laws” (IACP) and that local involvement would “would result in increased crime against immigrants and in the broader community” (MCC). The source of both statements appears to have been removed from their original online homes, and a revised 2024 statement from MCC contains significantly pared back language. 
• Track new state laws that pave the way for more detentions and deportations. The Washington Post published a piece on recently proposed state legislation attempting to do everything from allowing bounty hunters to detain immigrants to making immigration checks a mandatory part of traffic stops. Since then, other states have taken steps to make it easier to deport people convicted of misdemeanors (Utah) and criminalize “illegal entry into [the] state” (Idaho), among other things. With the legislative session winding down in many states, check in to see what passed (and what didn’t) in your own state and talk with local immigration groups about the potential impact of those policies. 
• And also track local and state laws, policies, and lawsuits intended to reduce detentions and deportations. Some jurisdictions have taken steps to affirm their “sanctuary” policies. In Washington, the Attorney General sued a county sheriff for detaining immigrants on behalf of ICE in alleged violation of state law, and the Illinois Attorney General argued that the federal government cannot force states to participate in immigration enforcement. The Attorney General of Arizona issued guidance stating that schools should deny federal immigration officials access to students without a valid warrant signed by a judge. And some state legislatures have considered legislation to restrict ICE detention in local jails (New Mexico) and establish privacy protections for immigrants (California). See what’s happening in your state, and follow the progress of lawsuits, which are easy to lose track of in the midst of so much legal action across every level of government. 
• Monitor the conditions immigrants face in local jails. Local officials participate in immigration detention in multiple ways. Local government agencies can either rent beds in their jails directly to ICE, or they can enter into intergovernmental agreements in which local governments subcontract with private companies who detain people for ICE. (See this policy brief for a more in-depth explanation of these complicated contracts.) These more opaque intergovernmental agreements can make it harder to understand what’s happening in your community—but not impossible. The recent loss of watchdog entities like the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the ombudsman overseeing immigration detention will likely make it more difficult for journalists to investigate these facilities, but you can still use state-level open records laws to obtain things like: sheriffs’ contracts with ICE; intergovernmental service agreements (IGSA) between ICE, sheriffs, and private contractors; grievance logs from facilities; use-of-force reports; medical complaints; and audits. Keep an eye on class-action lawsuits challenging conditions of confinement. If you aren’t able to talk directly to detained people or their families, check in with advocacy groups and legal clinics in your community. 
• Keep a close eye on the implementation of 2879(g) task forces in your community. The 287(g) task force model ended after multiple investigations and lawsuits alleging widespread abuse and racial discrimination by local police. For example, a 2013 court ruling over the Maricopa County (AZ) task force has cost taxpayers more than $300 million. Talk with litigators and immigrant rights advocates about whether or not they’re seeing similar issues with enforcement practices under the new task force agreements. See here for a complete list of jurisdictions with task force agreements. 

Experts on the role of local police in immigration enforcement

• Juan Cuba is the Executive Director of Sheriff Accountability Action, an organization that tracks, among other things, conditions in local jails and advocates for greater oversight and accountability for sheriff’s offices. 
• Lena Graber is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. She is a national expert on the role of local police in immigration enforcement and the use of ICE detainers. Lena has co-authored several ILRC publications including Motions to Suppress: Protecting the Constitutional Rights of Immigrants in Removal Proceedings; FOIA Requests and Other Background Checks; DACA: The Essential Legal Guide; and Parole in Immigration Law. 
• Amrutha Jindal is the Executive Director for the Lone Star Defenders Office. She coordinates and oversees the defense representation provided to indigent individuals charged under Operation Lone Star, a Texas program that deploys military and police resources to the Texas/Mexico border. Prior to that, Amrutha was the chief defender at a criminal defense nonprofit and was a federal public defender in San Diego, CA. 
• Scott Levy is Chief Policy Counsel at FWD.us where he works on criminal justice and immigration policy reform efforts at the state and national level. Prior to FWD.us, Scott worked for 14 years as an attorney at The Bronx Defenders, a holistic public defender office in the South Bronx, where he built and managed the office’s public policy practice.