The Pima County Sheriff’s Department is violating its own rules in tracking how many times law enforcement officials are contacting federal immigration authorities for assistance.
In an 18-month period, from January 2022 through June 2023, the sheriff’s department turned at least 16 undocumented migrants over to Border Patrol, according to agency records.
How many people the department has turned over to immigration officials since then is unclear. That’s because the Pima County Sheriff’s Department stopped following its own regulations in 2023.
“The ACLU of Arizona is deeply concerned that PCSD may not be abiding by its own recordkeeping requirements, especially in a climate of extreme hostility toward immigrants by the Trump administration,” John Mitchell, immigrants’ rights attorney for ACLU of Arizona, told Arizona Luminaria.
With the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants inciting fear in Southern Arizona communities and across the nation, residents of Pima County want clarity about law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration officials. At both the state and federal level, officials are writing laws and issuing directives to encourage local law enforcement agencies to accelerate their policing of immigration.
On his first day in office, Trump expanded deportation priorities to include any person in the country unlawfully, regardless of criminal history. That has led to local protests, and increased public worry about deportations that separate families, bypass due process laws and have improperly ensnared citizens.
“Pima County residents have the right to know when, how, and why their law enforcement officials invoke CBP and ICE’s presence upon their communities,” Mitchell said.
In response to a public records request, an official with the sheriff’s department told Arizona Luminaria that the agency’s tracking data reports have lapsed — for nearly two years.
“Communication Administration has advised me that they have no synopses since 6/23,” wrote Peter Aguilar, the department’s records technician, in a March 31 email.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Arizona Luminaria on May 6 that he wasn’t aware the department’s rules required the logging of requests for federal immigration authority assistance. He said they would change the policy so the department would no longer have to track requests to Border Patrol.
Operational rules and regulations, as publicly posted on the website, state that the sheriff’s department “shall track department requests for Federal immigration authority assistance or response.” The regulations also require officials to create a monthly synopsis collecting data about their requests to immigration authorities.
The old data reports provided to Arizona Luminaria show the department had been consistently, though not often, contacting Border Patrol officials about undocumented immigrants.
Between January 2022 and June 2023, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department requested assistance from Border Patrol at least eight times, according to the reports.
Neither Nanos nor the department’s public information officer answered Arizona Luminaria’s questions about how many requests have been made since June 2023 to Border Patrol, as well as to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
A December 2022 memo to Nanos from Cecilia Ochoa, a department communications section manager, offers insight into the type of information the agency collects.
“Communications commenced tracking Department requests for Border Patrol response effective March 1, 2018,” the memo states. The tracking of data included, “nature of the request, results of the request, how the request was received, badge number of the involved communications staff and date and time of the call to (from) Border Patrol.”
Arizona Luminaria obtained the memos through a public records request.
Looking for trust, transparency
Pima County Supervisor Jen Allen, of District 3, told Arizona Luminaria community trust is at stake.
“Transparency is critical to building trust,” Allen said in an emailed statement.
“While the Trump Administration is demonizing and promoting unlawful disappearances of immigrants and US citizens, we need to trust that local law enforcement is still recognizing and upholding our constitutional rights,” Allen added.
“We need local law enforcement to be transparent about if and why they are collaborating with federal immigration enforcement agencies,” she said. “Especially if their leadership committed to staying out of immigration enforcement.”
The public information officer for the sheriff’s department did not respond to a detailed list of questions about why they stopped tracking the requests.
Nanos has repeatedly said he would not force deputies to serve as de facto federal immigration authorities, which he has argued strips critical local resources allocated for the protection of Pima County people and neighborhoods.
“We provide public safety for all those who are in our community. Whether you are a visitor, whether you are a resident, it doesn’t matter. Your immigration status is not a concern to us. What we don’t do is we don’t enforce immigration law,” Nanos told the Arizona Daily Star in January.
But local groups that have formed rapid response teams to monitor the presence and activities of Border Patrol and ICE agents in Southern Arizona have documented various instances of Pima County Sheriff’s Department deputies working with Border Patrol.
“The complete violation of the rule of law by the Trump administration demands that our local and state leaders openly challenge their policies, and step up to protect their residents,” Isabel Garcia told Arizona Luminaria. Garcia is an immigrants’ rights attorney and a leader of Derechos Humanos, a migrant rights organization serving Southern Arizona.
Garcia added that the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Tucson City Council “must issue directives to its policing agencies to actively resist these attacks on our community.”
In late January, responding to community concerns, Tucson’s mayor, city manager, city attorney, and chief of police issued a joint statement reiterating Tucson Police Department’s longstanding stance on the agency’s role in immigration enforcement.
Tucson’s policies, which “were revised and updated in the aftermath of the Arizona Legislature’s adoption of SB 1070 nearly 15 years ago, continue to state that enforcement of immigration violations arising out of a person’s unauthorized presence in the United States is reserved for federal agencies, and is not part of the mission of TPD,” the statement said.
Still, state and local law enforcement officials in Arizona are authorized to look up a person’s immigration status under the remaining provisions of Senate Bill 1070 — the so-called “show me your papers” law — that were not struck down by federal courts.
Not following its own rules
The operations policies — showing the sheriff’s department is violating its own rules and regulations — are outlined in a section titled “International Border Related Issues” that falls under Rules and Regulations on Arrest, Detention, and Transportation Procedures.
The regulations state:
- “Requests for assistance from Federal immigration authorities shall be made via the Department’s Communications Section.”
- “Communications shall track department requests for Federal immigration authority assistance or response.”
- “The Communications Section Manager shall complete a monthly synopsis of this data.”
- “Unless absolutely necessary, requests for Federal immigration authorities shall not be made by personal or department-issued cell phones.”
Dawn Gardner, information and records manager, told Arizona Luminaria on April 30, that the policy “is currently being updated as we no longer track this information.”
As of May 14, the rules have not been updated on the department’s website. They are cited in Chapter 10 of the online operations policies, dated Feb. 27, 2025 and marked “Pima County Sheriff’s Department General Order 2025-001.”
Deputies on video
In late April, just off Interstate 10, near Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department deputy who had stopped a driver can be heard saying he called Border Patrol, according to a video shared by a local rapid response group with Arizona Luminaria.
Volunteers from various primarily migrant rights groups — loosely organized as the Tucson Rapid Response Group in a collaboration among Derechos Humanos, Borderlinks and Paisanos Unidos — have formed teams to observe immigration arrests, as well as help inform people of their rights and monitor potential abuses.
In the video, the deputy says the stop was for a traffic violation. The rapid response volunteer recording asks the deputy why he contacted Border Patrol. The deputy responds: “As a backup unit to me.” The volunteer asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from law enforcement.
The rapid response group shared another video, taken in March at a parking lot in central Tucson, with Arizona Luminaria. The recording shows a deputy working with a Border Patrol agent and another official wearing a bullet-proof vest and black mask over his face after a traffic stop in Tucson.
Arizona Luminaria shared the videos with Nanos and the department’s public information officer, along with a list of questions about the interactions. The officials did not respond.
“Sheriff’s offices are accountable to the people they serve,” said Mitchell, the ACLU immigrants’ rights attorney. “Consistent and transparent recordkeeping is a critical function that furthers this duty.”
“Deviations risk misallocating the trust, power, and funding that constituents vest in their sheriff — and therefore require precise documentation of all communications with federal immigration authorities,” Mitchell said. “PCSD’s own rules reflect this.”
Pima County Supervisor Allen focused on ensuring the public understands policing priorities, especially in chaotic times.
“Local law enforcement – from leadership to the deputy on the street — need to be clear that collaboration with federal immigration enforcement is not a priority and does not serve our communities’ safety,” she said.
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