A shift appears to be underway in how the federal government does immigration enforcement – away from the high-profile show of force seen during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minnesota and toward a less visible approach, relying more on local police.

“Partnership is vitally important,” Markwayne Mullin, the new secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress at his confirmation hearing last month. “I would love to see ICE become a transport more than the front line. If we can get back into just simply working with law enforcement, we’re going to them, we’re picking up these criminals from their jail.”

In a statement to NPR this week, a DHS spokesperson echoed Mullin’s line of thinking: “ICE has supercharged efforts with state and local law enforcement to assist federal immigration officers in our efforts to make America safe again.”

Here’s what to know about how that shift is taking place – and what it might look like in communities around the country.

Why is this shift happening? 

The enforcement operation in Minnesota was aggressive and highly visible: federal immigration officers slammed protesters to the ground, deployed tear gas in neighborhoods and outside schools, dragged people from their cars, and ultimately killed two U.S. citizens.

These tactics were also very politically unpopular. In February, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that two thirds of Americans said ICE had gone too far.

How do ICE officers work with local and state police?

Mullin’s comments point to increased emphasis on the federal 287(g) program, which allows state and local law enforcement officers to take on some of the duties of ICE officers.

Though the program has existed for decades, the number of police and sheriff’s departments signing up for the program during President Trump’s second term has grown exponentially. During his first term in 2019, there were only 45 agreements. In 2025 alone, there were more than 1,100 agreements, a previous NPR analysis showed. Now, there are more than 1,600 agreements across 39 states, according to ICE.

About a third of the entire U.S. population now lives in a county where a local law enforcement agency has signed a 287(g) agreement, according to an ACLU report released in February.

The most intensive version of the program, called the Task Force Model, deputizes local police to enforce immigration law, including arresting people on ICE’s behalf during regular law enforcement work, like traffic stops. On its website, ICE refers to this model as a “force multiplier.”

That model, discontinued during the Obama administration, was revived when Trump took office again, and now makes up the majority of 287(g) agreements. More than 13,000 police officers around the country are taking part in that model, according to an analysis released earlier this year from FWD.us, an organization that advocates for immigration and criminal justice reform.

How does it affect communities when local police work with ICE?

It’s not uncommon for U.S. law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities, even without a signed agreement. What has changed in recent years are mandates in states like Florida and Texas, where state officials required some or all law enforcement agencies to join a 287(g) program. In those two states alone, the ACLU report estimates that more than 40 million people live in a place where their local law enforcement signed one of these agreements.

Florida has among the most 287(g) agreements in the nation, along with Texas, according to the latest ICE data.

Coinciding with new enthusiasm from ICE for local partners, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration ramped up pressure on all Florida law enforcement agencies to sign up, despite only sheriffs being required. There were carrots in the form of bonuses for officers that received 287(g) training, and sticks in the form of threats to remove elected officials from office who didn’t sign on.

The campaign was successful. Agencies from the Florida Highway Patrol, to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, to university campus police departments have all signed up to work with ICE.

On the ground, the seemingly ubiquitous partnerships have created a sea change in local policing.

At least 1,800 state troopers on Florida highways are trained to enforce immigration law alongside their regular police duties. That has created situations where traffic stops for minor offenses — like tinted windows or failing to use a turn signal — turn into inquiries into a person’s immigration status, an occurrence happening in Texas as well.

Arrests have risen sharply, with the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement reporting at least 10,000 immigration arrests by local agencies alone, not ICE, since last August. The majority of those arrests are made by Florida Highway Patrol troopers.

One county particularly affected is Palm Beach County and the majority-Hispanic city of Lake Worth Beach, where advocates with the Guatemalan-Maya Center have said Florida state troopers are profiling residents.

“ They’ve been the most aggressive in our cities,” Mariana Blanco, director of operations for the center, said at an event earlier this year. “They’re the ones that are targeting, racially profiling our people.”

Additionally, when local police work with ICE, it makes it harder for the community to be aware of immigration enforcement happening near them, says Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council.

She says that’s been the case in Texas for years, where local police cooperation with federal authorities represents a much quieter approach than the tactics seen in Minnesota – where observers would track ICE and use whistles to alert neighbors to their presence.

“Your whistle doesn’t work in Texas. You’re not going to need a whistle in Texas because you’re never going to have that Minneapolis moment. They’re going to try to keep this hidden as much as possible,” Etter says.

The fear, she says, is this more hidden form of enforcement will ramp up elsewhere in the country.

How do state and local police feel about working with ICE? 

Some agencies that sign up for 287(g) agreements have been offered incentives from the federal government, including reimbursements for salaries, benefits and overtime pay for each officer trained for the Task Force Model, as well as thousands of dollars for new equipment and vehicles.

But beyond the monetary benefits, some sheriffs are also staunch ideological supporters of the Trump administration’s immigration approach.

“They came here to the United States illegally. A crime was committed every minute, every day and every year that that person is still here, they’re still committing the crime. They did not come here the right way,” Sheriff Billy Woods, of Marion County, Fla., said of undocumented immigrants.

Some police leaders across the country have expressed concerns that cooperating with federal immigration authorities erodes community trust – and could make undocumented immigrants and others afraid to call 911 when they are victims of a crime or to participate as witnesses in criminal investigations. Some states, like Maryland, have banned 287(g) agreements.

In Florida, the large number of people arrested by local police has also made some of DeSantis’ most fervent supporters uncomfortable.

“There are those here that are working hard. They have their kids in college or in school. They’re going to church on Sunday. They’re not violating the law. They are living the American dream,” Sheriff Grady Judd, of Polk County, Fla., said at a state immigration board meeting last month.

Judd stressed that he still felt strongly about detaining those who have committed crimes, but said “maybe there needs to be a path” for immigrants who are law-abiding and add to society, though it’s unclear what the sheriff meant specifically.

It’s also unclear if the recent pushback in Florida from several conservative sheriffs will change how immigration enforcement is conducted in the state. So far, immigrant advocates say not much has changed.

BOSTON — A federal judge has halted efforts by the Trump administration to collect data that proves higher education institutions aren’t considering race in admissions.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in Boston on Friday granting the preliminary injunction follows a lawsuit filed earlier this month by a coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general. It will only apply to public universities in plaintiffs

The federal judge said the federal government likely has the authority to collect the data, but the demand was rolled out to universities in a “rushed and chaotic” manner.

“The 120-day deadline imposed by the President led directly to the failure of NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) to engage meaningfully with the institutions during the notice-and-comment process to address the multitude of problems presented by the new requirements,” Saylor wrote.

President Donald Trump ordered the data collection in August after he raised concerns that colleges and universities were using personal statements and other proxies to consider race, which he views as illegal discrimination.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of affirmative action in admissions but said colleges could still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants share that information in their admissions essays.

The states argue the data collection risks invading student privacy and leading to baseless investigations of colleges and universities. They also argued that universities have not been given enough time to collect the data.

“The data has been sought in such a hasty and irresponsible way that it will create problems for universities,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Michelle Pascucci, told the court, adding that the effort seem was aimed at uncovering unlawful practices.

The Education Department has defended the effort, arguing taxpayers deserve transparency on how money is spent at institutions that receive federal funding.

The administration’s policy echoes settlement agreements the government negotiated with Brown University and Columbia University, restoring their federal research money. The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade-point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to be audited by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public.

The National Center for Education Statistics is to collect the new data, including the race and sex of colleges’ applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said the data, which was originally due by March 18, must be disaggregated by race and sex and retroactively reported for the past seven years.

If colleges fail to submit timely, complete and accurate data, the administration has said McMahon can take action under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which outlines requirements for colleges receiving federal financial aid for students.

The Trump administration separately has sued Harvard University over similar data, saying it refused to provide admissions records the Justice Department demanded to ensure the school stopped using affirmative action. Harvard has said the university has been responding to the government’s requests and is in compliance with the high court ruling against affirmative action. On Monday, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights directed Harvard to comply with the data requests within 20 days for face referral to the U.S. Justice Department.

David West raised four kids in Los Angeles working as a Hollywood cinematographer — no mean feat in such a pricey city. But a few years ago, his life took a hard turn.

“Everything went south. Divorce. My brother died,” he said. “My dog died.” On top of that, a string of clients who’d hired him for decades also passed away.

Before long, he’d burned through cash and damaged his credit. He moved to Fresno, Calif., and now, at 72, West is in a situation he never imagined at this stage of life but one that more and more older people are facing: renting a room in the home of a complete stranger.

“I tried to move, like, an apartment’s worth of stuff into a room,” he said with a laugh at how impossible it seemed. “You know, how do you do that? I still haven’t figured it out.”

West looked into a housing subsidy, but his income is just over the limit, so he’s grateful for the cost savings of a house share. His roommate, also an older man, covers Wi-Fi, utilities and cable. West volunteers his photography skills at the church where the man is involved and shares his Costco membership.

“It’s that give-and-take thing,” he said. “It’s trying to help each other out as much as possible.”

David West while working on a documentary in Brazil.

David West

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David West

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Roommates are skewing older

The high cost of housing means more people are being priced out of not only owning a home but also renting alone. The share of adults 65 and over looking to rent with a roommate has tripled in the past decade, according to the listings site SpareRoom.

“They’re not the biggest group of roommates, but they’re by far the fastest growing,” said the site’s communications director, Matt Hutchinson.

SpareRoom finds that roommates in general are skewing older. Young people are living with their parents longer, unable to afford moving out or simply trying to save up. Meanwhile, more people in their 50s, 60s and older are unable to make it on their own.

“Maybe 10 years ago they’d have looked at a one-bed or a studio and thought, ‘Well, I’ll rent that,’” Hutchinson said. Now “they’re looking at prices and going, ‘There’s no way I could afford that.’”

Baby boomers have been aging as housing costs across the U.S. have spiked. In 2023, more than a third of households headed by adults 65 and over struggled to pay housing costs, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, and the share is even bigger for women living alone.

“Older adults are more likely to be housing-cost burdened than working-age adults, and that gets more severe with age,” said Jennifer Molinsky, who researches aging and housing at the center. “It’s climbed up the income scale. So more and more, you know, middle-income people are struggling with housing costs than ever before.”

Older adults are also more likely to face major life events that can lead to financial strain. Caezilia Loibl, chair of the Consumer Sciences Program at Ohio State University, has researched the financial toll of chronic disease and the loss of a spouse at an older age.

“The shock is enormous,” she said, “and we see it very clearly in our data how the debt burden goes up and financial vulnerability goes up.” People were more likely to fall behind in debt payments, for example, see their credit score drop, file for bankruptcy and face foreclosure.

The upside of learning to live with less

Darla Desautel at an arboretum in Arizona. She appreciates not only the cost savings of a shared rental but also the flexibility to move to other places when she wants.

Darla Desautel

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Saving money may be the top reason that more older people are house-sharing. But some see other benefits.

“Oh, I think it’s wonderful. Maybe more of the way people used to live,” said Darla Desautel, who’s 74 and has rented with roommates for years, though she’s currently house-sitting in Minnesota.

She loves the flexibility of not being tied down and being able to move where she wants, and she thinks not living alone is healthier. She got along especially well with one roommate who also was an older woman.

“We had a lot in common, and that’s pretty special when that works out,” she said.

To be sure, there can be annoyances. One place was kept too cold in winter and too hot in summer. There can be smelly cat litter boxes or a roommate who talks on speakerphone in a common area. “Noise is huge. A lot of people think they’re quiet when they’re really not,” she said.

If she could afford it, Desautel said, she would rent solo, though “with a short-term lease.” But that would eat up more than half her income. In addition to receiving Social Security, she still works occasionally as a leadership consultant and coach, and she is a licensed secondhand dealer selling “other people’s junk.”

Desautel is proud that she has learned to whittle down possessions and live with less. “Right now I can move across country with 10 boxes shipped USPS and take a plane,” she said.

For now, that’s her plan, driving this time, to continue her house-sitting gig in Arizona for the summer. And when that ends, she’ll find her next roommate.