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Sherrod Brown, Weighing a 2026 Senate Bid, Starts a Workers’ Group
Sherrod Brown is out of the Senate, but he is not done with politics.
Mr. Brown, the Ohio Democrat who lost his bid for a fourth Senate term last year, announced on Monday that he was forming a nonprofit group called the Dignity of Work Institute. The group, he said in an interview, will aim to illustrate the plight of workers in a country where both major parties have forgotten their concerns.
“Democrats have become seen as the compensate-the-betrayed party,” Mr. Brown said. “You know, you lost your job, we’ll give you some help. And Republicans are the reward-the-winners party. And that’s corporations and the ultrawealthy. Neither party is the make-workers-the-winners party.”
Mr. Brown, 72, fell to defeat last year as President Trump won an overwhelming victory in Ohio, which during the former senator’s 32 years in Congress transformed from a presidential battleground to a Republican stronghold.
Now Mr. Brown, who considered running for president in 2020, is seeking to resuscitate what has long been his signature political issue — the fate of American workers. At the same time, his fellow Democrats are beginning to coalesce around a message of opposition to the billionaires running the federal government.
His new organization will function as a nonpartisan think tank, conducting research about American workers and aiming to illuminate challenges they face in an effort to persuade politicians and the public to pay attention to workers’ needs.
Not that Mr. Brown is necessarily done running for elected office himself.
The famously frumpy Ohioan said he was weighing running for either Senate or governor in his home state next year. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, is barred from seeking re-election by term limits, and Senator Jon Husted, a Republican whom Mr. DeWine appointed to fill the seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance, will face voters for the chance to serve the remaining two years of Mr. Vance’s term.
Democrats again face a daunting Senate map in 2026. Any hope the party has of taking back the chamber, which Republicans now control 53 to 47, requires winning red states like Ohio.
Dr. Amy Acton, a Democrat who ran the Ohio Department of Health during the coronavirus pandemic, is already running for governor. Several Republicans are also in the race, including Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump ally who ran for president last year, and Dave Yost, the Ohio attorney general.
Mr. Brown said the possibility that he could seek office again was “not really material” to his new institute.
“I’ll make a decision later about governor or senator,” he said. “I really don’t know if I want to run for office again.”
The first order of business for his group is to amplify the results of a poll it conducted that found a dismal and unstable outlook for American workers.
The poll found that 60 percent of Americans had worked more than one job at a time, and that 20 percent said they had worked three jobs simultaneously. Those surveyed expressed anger at the country’s economic system: Half said it needed to change, and 30 percent called for a complete overhaul.
The reality of Americans’ anger at the system, Mr. Brown said, does not comport with sunny portrayals of the economy from Mr. Trump and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during their presidencies. Mr. Brown said the polling helped explain why voters in three straight presidential elections had chosen the candidate promising more change.
“Biden and Trump, they both cite the unemployment rate and decreasing rate of inflation, but they’re not really talking to workers and not really understanding workers’ lives that way,” Mr. Brown said. “Voters in 2020 chose Biden because they wanted change. In 2024, they voted for Trump because they wanted change again.”
Early on a Tuesday morning last month, the sky still black, a group of deputies from the Laramie County sheriff’s office set out to patrol two major interstates that cross their corner of southeast Wyoming. Over the course of five hours, they made 41 traffic stops, issued 12 citations, made two criminal arrests and — through a new partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — detained seven immigrants.
One person was asleep in the backseat of a silver pickup truck stopped for a too-dim rear license plate light. Two passengers in a minivan that had been going 12 miles per hour over the limit were also taken into custody. Four others were detained after their pickup, too, was stopped for speeding.
All were booked into the county jail to await transfer to an ICE detention facility. The deputies working the immigration operation earned a combined $1,325 in overtime courtesy of the federal government.
The Trump administration has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies in its mass deportation campaign by deputizing their officers as immigration agents, extending ICE’s reach far beyond where the agency typically operates.
Living in the United States without authorization is a civil violation, not a criminal offense, and local police officers have no responsibility to enforce federal immigration law. But after completing a 40-hour virtual training, certified officers can inquire about the immigration status of people they encounter in the course of routine police work; call ICE if they suspect a person is undocumented; and, if given the go-ahead, take immigrants into custody.
Agencies that have signed agreements to participate in the federal 287(g) task force program.
Where state and local law enforcement work for ICE
Before President Trump returned to office, the program — named 287(g) for a section of federal immigration law — had largely consisted of agreements with local agencies to identify and process immigrants already held in jails. The Trump administration expanded the cooperation, and for the first time offered cash incentives to agencies to sign up and make arrests.
Participation has exploded, and de facto ICE officers are now on the ground in hundreds of cities and counties across 31 states. Several thousand officers have been credentialed — state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, police officers, constables — on top of the 12,000 new officers and agents that ICE hired last year. The rush to sign up and cash in has included some unusual agencies, too, like Louisiana’s State Fire Marshal and Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Perhaps most significantly, the program has the potential to turn highways and roads into sites of immigration enforcement.
“ICE does not have that generalized patrol authority, so it’s really great for ICE that they can use state and local police in this way,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Wyoming office is suing Laramie County over its agreement with ICE.
287(g) partnerships by type of agreement. Agencies may sign more than one agreement with ICE.
Hundreds of law enforcement agencies have joined ICE’s task force
Brian Kozak, the Laramie County sheriff, said the program allows his office to be more efficient and move detainees through his jail more quickly.
“If someone is undocumented, it’s faster for our deputies to book them on an ICE hold and not even do the local charges. Then they don’t have to sit in my jail waiting for those local charges to be adjudicated,” he said, though he added that more serious felony offenses would still be charged.
‘A tremendous asset’
Even though 1,200 local task force partners have signed on, the program is still ramping up. Fewer than 300 participating agencies had both credentialed at least one officer and received a payment for immigration enforcement work as of March, according to a payout ledger obtained by Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist.
Researchers estimate that the share of people detained through any type of 287(g) program rose to about 10 percent in January, up from about 3 percent a year before. The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer detailed questions about the program or share more recent arrest or payment figures.
“The 287(g) program can be a tremendous asset to you and to the country,” Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, said this week at the National Sheriffs’ Association conference. “If we had the participation of all the county sheriffs that are in this building right now, think how much faster those arrests would move up.”
Over the course of a week in April, Laramie County was among the top arresting agencies in the country, alongside larger state authorities like the Florida Highway Patrol and the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, according to snapshots of internal ICE data obtained by The New York Times. Together, the top five local partners made 162 immigration arrests that week; over a week in May, the top agencies made around 300 arrests.
Those are modest figures, considering ICE recorded about 7,000 arrests each week nationwide in recent months. The larger goal may be the perception of an ever more widespread immigration enforcement apparatus.
“The arrest numbers sometimes don’t matter to them if the message and rhetoric is strong enough — that any kind of day-to-day activity for an immigrant could lead to deportation,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director for the American Immigration Council, a legal advocacy group that supports immigrants.
Financial incentives
For the local partners, the program comes with an enticing offer: a one-time payment of $100,000 for new vehicles and $7,500 in equipment funds per certified task force officer. ICE says it will pay the salary and benefits for officers who do immigration work full time, and overtime for up to 25 percent of an officer’s salary.
Agreements are most common in states where Republican leaders back the president’s immigration agenda. Last year, Florida became the first state to require local agencies’ participation in the 287(g) program, followed by Texas this year. Elsewhere, participation is more scattered — and Democratic lawmakers seeking to reign in ICE have succeeded in banning the agreements altogether in 11 states, most recently in New York.
287(g) task force agreements by state.
Local partnerships with ICE are most common in the South
Laramie County now has 30 credentialed task force officers. Since October, they have made 412 immigration arrests and the sheriff’s office has received about $300,000 for its participation.
Larger statewide agencies stand to be paid millions. Then there are the hundreds of smaller agencies with only a few task force officers, like the police department in Colebrook, N.H., which has three.
“It’s a huge thing for a small department like us to get that stipend,” said Chief Paul Rella, who said his department has made two ICE arrests since January and has received around $100,000. “But even if there wasn’t a stipend, we would’ve done it anyway. To be able to have the authority to detain someone that may be here illegally, it all comes down to community safety.”
Immigrant rights groups and critics of the program say it has the opposite effect: As more police officers work for ICE, immigrants may be discouraged from reporting crimes or avoid contact with local law enforcement for fear of deportation.
“It’s a balancing act,” acknowledged Benjamin Cox, the police chief in Duncan, S.C., a town of about 5,000 with two task force officers. “I need the people in our town, no matter their immigration status, to feel comfortable calling me. That’s the most challenging part of 287(g).”
Opponents of the program also say that it can lead to racial profiling. In 2011 and 2012, the Justice Department found that participating agencies in Arizona and North Carolina had engaged in patterns of discriminatory policing, leading the Obama administration to discontinue the task force program.
Sheriff Kozak is familiar with those risks. He worked as a police officer for 20 years in Mesa, Ariz., when Sheriff Joe Arpaio set up random checkpoints and neighborhood sweeps that targeted Latinos, and he said he saw firsthand that the sheriff was “crossing the line.”
“Our policy requires lawful contact following a violation of state law,” he said. “We’re focused on traffic enforcement and traffic safety, and then a side thing is the immigration.”
A D.H.S. spokesperson said accusations that 287(g) agreements encourage racial profiling are false and that ICE’s local partners fairly enforce immigration law.
From commute to detention
By late morning, the Laramie County deputies were preparing to head back to the jail when they stopped the speeding minivan. Four workers with a drywall company headed to a job site were inside. The driver and front-seat passenger had valid identification but told the deputies that the other passengers did not.
“We don’t typically ask other passengers unless there’s a reason, but nothing says you can’t ask” for identification, Chance Walkama, a chief deputy, explained. “That’s how things happen all the time.” Passengers who have not broken a law may decline to speak with the police, but many immigrants are unaware of this right.
Mr. Walkama texted the passengers’ information to his contact at the local ICE field office in Cheyenne. The ICE agent wrote back that one of their names matched someone with a criminal history and the same date of birth. After a few more questions, Mr. Walkama handcuffed the man, Christian Rodriguez, and loaded him into the deputies’ car.
He is now being held at an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colo. “I don’t understand. I wasn’t driving, I had my seatbelt on,” Mr. Rodriguez said by phone from detention. “It’s not fair.”
Mr. Rodriguez, 29, arrived with his parents from Mexico as a minor and was about two years into the years-long process of applying for a green card. He is married to a U.S. citizen and has six children and step-children who are all U.S. citizens. He has no criminal convictions, records show; charges stemming from a domestic dispute with his ex-wife in 2020 were dropped.
Asked whether Mr. Rodriguez’s arrest reflected the purpose of Laramie County’s partnership with ICE, another chief deputy, Aaron Veldheer, said, “It weighs on me” — that a person who was riding in a car on his way to work is now separated from his family.
“Not that I wish somebody got hurt or there was a crime committed, but, yeah, it’s collateral,” Mr. Veldheer said. “But it’s part of the job. We can’t look the other way, either.”
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Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images; Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions; JC Olivera/Getty Images for the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars Campaign
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Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images; Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions; JC Olivera/Getty Images for the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars Campaign
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