This story was originally published by Arizona Mirror.

Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller acted unlawfully when he agreed to help federal immigration agents identify people to deport, according to attorneys for the county’s board of supervisors. 

Last year, Miller signed his office up for a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, effectively turning the county’s 10 investigators — who are responsible for building legal cases against crimes committed locally — into support staff for federal immigration officials. The partnership lets investigators question the citizenship status of people they encounter during routine interactions and arrest people suspected of being in the country without authorization, including while out in the community or during interviews with victims or witnesses. 

The board of supervisors appeared to signal opposition to that partnership earlier this month, and closed-door discussions on Wednesday culminated in an assertion that the agreement with the Trump administration is illegal and invalid.

Attorney Brett Johnson, an outside attorney the board hired, told the supervisors that Miller doesn’t have any legal ability to enter into federal or intergovernmental agreements without the board’s approval. Arizona law, he said, reserves that power for the county’s governing entity. 

On top of that, federal law strictly defines a 287(g) partnership as an agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and a “state or any political subdivision of the state.”  

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“The county is a political subdivision,” Johnson said. “The Pinal County Attorney’s Office is not a political subdivision.” 

The majority of 287(g) agreements are between sheriffs offices or police departments that were given the go-ahead by county leaders. Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has its own 287(g) partnership with the federal government that is jail-based. It allows officers to use federal databases to investigate the legal status of people who have been arrested and hold them for 48 hours beyond their scheduled release time for ICE agents to take custody, even if they have not been charged with a crime. The agreement between ICE and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has been in place since at least 2008, when the sheriff, Pinal County manager and board clerk signed on to authorize the partnership. 

The task force model agreement that Miller entered into by himself is vastly more aggressive and was recently revived by the Trump administration after being discontinued for over a decade because of racial profiling concerns. 

Johnson pointed out that the purpose of 287(g) agreements is to expand the ability of local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws. The Pinal County Attorney’s Office, he said, is not a law enforcement agency. Instead, it serves to prosecute violations of law that are referred to it by actual law enforcement agencies, like the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. 

And there isn’t anything the board can do to change that fundamental difference in roles, Johnson added. Nothing in Arizona’s Constitution or laws gives county governing boards the power to grant the county attorney’s office the ability to enforce laws and make arrests. 

“The bottom line is the Pinal County Attorney’s Office is the prosecutorial arm of the county,” Johnson said. “It is not a law enforcement agency, like the sheriff’s office. As such, any 287(g) agreement is void as unauthorized by law because it was not approved by this board.”

James Daniels, a spokesman for the board, said the conclusions would be shared with both Miller’s office and ICE. In a letter outlining the legal reasoning to the board from its legal team, attorneys wrote that the federal partnership is effectively considered void and Miller’s office is expected to refrain from continuing to act under the expanded authority granted by it. 

Neither ICE nor the Pinal County Attorney’s Office responded to a request for comment on the board’s legal conclusions, or questions about why the board wasn’t included in conversations about the adoption of the agreement. 

While the board issued a sharp rebuke against Miller’s actions on Wednesday, it greenlit the continuation of the federal partnership between ICE and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. 

A change in the agency’s public information officer for the agreement needed board approval. Cognizant of the controversy over Miller’s actions, Sheriff Ross Teeple reminded board members that his agency’s agreement is limited to enforcement within the county’s jail and has been in place for more than a decade. Teeple likened using federal databases to investigate a person’s citizenship status to the cross-verification checks officers conduct to flag people who have arrest warrants in other counties. 

“No one wants erroneous releases,” he said. “Just like we check if (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office) has a warrant for someone’s arrest, we run everyone through the system to make sure there’s not a warrant for an arrest by another law enforcement entity.” 

Board Chairman Jeffrey McClure appeared reassured by the fact that the jail-enforcement model doesn’t allow sheriffs deputies the ability to conduct questionable arrests in the community the way the task-force model would have allowed county attorney investigators to do. 

”Just to be clear, you don’t hunt people down, kick doors in — this is people that have been brought to jail, that’s correct?” he asked. 

Teeple confirmed that deputies are restricted to enforcing immigration laws within the jail, against people who have been arrested. The board unanimously agreed to update and preserve the federal partnership with the sheriff’s office.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.