Local law enforcement agencies in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia are making more arrests for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement this year compared to last, according to the latest federal data.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting — in partnership with the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom — analyzed the data, which ICE provided in response to a public records request to the Deportation Data Project at University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles.
The review found hundreds of immigrants across the region are arrested and taken into ICE custody each month. And local police and sheriffs are assisting more than ever, the data show.
The arrests across the region come as President Donald Trump pursues an aggressive anti-immigrant agenda focused on deporting millions of people. In July, federal data show monthly ICE arrest totals nationwide hit a new high of about 49,000 arrests.
In Kentucky, local law enforcement accounted for 18% of monthly ICE arrests across the state in June, a record high under President Donald Trump.
In Tennessee, state and local agencies made up 30% of the state’s reported ICE arrests in May, also a record high, data show.
In West Virginia, the most common types of ICE-related arrests since Oct. 2025 are those done by state or local law enforcement, KyCIR’s review found. In January, the share of statewide ICE arrests by local police peaked at 87% when more than a dozen agencies partnered with federal agents to carry out “Operation Country Roads,” a two-week crackdown that led to about 650 arrests.
The contribution from local law enforcement is not surprising, especially as the U.S. government and some state governments like Tennessee’s entice agencies with financial incentives if they sign up for the federal government’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local police and sheriffs as immigration agents.
KyCIR’s review of federal data shows more agencies across Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia signed a 287(g) agreement in the first nine months of this year than in all of 2025.
In Tennessee, which now requires local sheriffs to participate in the program, law enforcement agencies have signed 144 agreements since January 2025, according to last week’s ICE data. In Kentucky, local police and sheriffs across the state have signed 59 agreements. And West Virginia agencies signed 39 agreements.
In West Virginia, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced last year that the state’s police, national guard and corrections department would participate in the federal 287(g) program.
In Kentucky, the Republican-run legislature did not pass a proposal to force state and local law enforcement to join the 287(g) program.
The group of academics and attorneys who lead the Deportation Data Project caution that its information may be an undercount of 287(g) arrests. Still, the data helps illustrate how our region plays a role in national immigration enforcement.
For this report, KyCIR requested, but did not receive, interviews with governors and top legislative leaders of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
The federal government has a long history of leaning on local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement, but now the tactic is both more visible and more widely used, said Amada Armenta, director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.
"It's a change in degree as opposed to a change in practice," she said. “The culture of the immigration enforcement bureaucracy at this moment is, like, very unleashed.”
During a previous rise in 287(g) agreements in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Armenta researched how it played out in Nashville. She said officials told her they turned down many people who applied to be deputized because they didn’t want officers participating for the wrong reasons.
“And they didn't say what the wrong reasons were, but it seemed very clear that it was, like, racial animus or xenophobia,” she said. “This was a professional job, and even amongst the people who were deputized, you know, they felt some sort of pride about treating people with respect, and that was important to them.”
Now, Armenta said the professional standards that immigration enforcement agents once operated under are gone.
“It’s always been silently cruel to, like, rip people from their lives, but they sort of celebrate that cruelty in a way that's not only unprofessional, but I think, like, we haven't seen it in modern history,” she said.
Federal data show 5% or less of the people arrested each month for ICE have been convicted of a violent crime. Under former President Joe Biden, the trend was similar from October 2022 to the end of his term, but in that time federal immigration officials arrested fewer people overall, data show.
In Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia this year, only about 3% or less of monthly ICE arrests between January and July were of people convicted of a violent crime. The only exception was in May, in West Virginia, when 7.5% of the people arrested had a violent crime on their record, the data show.
Jails play a role
Across the region, local jails hold hundreds of immigrants for ICE each month, the federal data show.
ICE can ask jail officials to either notify them in advance when an immigrant is scheduled to be freed, or keep someone locked up for an extra 48 hours beyond when they’re supposed to be released so federal agents can come take that person into custody.
Prisons and jails generally aren’t required to grant ICE’s requests. But new laws can change that. In Tennessee, for example, the legislature voted this year to require sheriffs with 287(g) agreements to hold people in their jail for another two days when ICE asks.
Even before the new state rule, some jails voluntarily granted ICE’s requests, said Jazmin Ramirez, advocacy director for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Data show that, as of Aug. 6, the five Tennessee jails that received the most requests to hold immigrants under the Trump administration are in Davidson, Rutherford, Sevier, Shelby and Hamilton counties.
From jails transferring people into ICE custody to law enforcement making more 287(g) arrests to a federal task force targeting immigrants in Memphis, Ramirez said this all takes a human toll.
“We are talking about our neighbors being taken. We are talking about people who have had roots in Tennessee for years, if not decades,” she said. “And oftentimes, again, the most directly impacted individuals are the children that are left behind, wondering what is next.”
In Kentucky, ICE has increased the number of requests it sends to prisons and jails under Trump, hitting a monthly high mark of 373 in July, the data show.
The five jails that received the most requests so far were in Louisville Metro and in Fayette, Kenton, Boone and Warren counties.
In Louisville, Mayor Craig Greenberg sparked controversy last year when he ordered local jail officials to honor ICE detainer requests.
Amber Duke, executive director of the ACLU of Kentucky, recently said, “In the accounting that will happen, you know, in the years to come about this moment, Louisville has played a significant role – through this policy change – of funneling people into detention centers.”
In West Virginia, ICE detainer requests are less common — peaking at 39 in a single month.
The five West Virginia detention centers getting the most requests are the Hazelton U.S. Penitentiary and the Eastern, North Central, Western and Southern regional jails.
But ICE doesn’t just take immigrants into custody at local jails. It also uses some as de facto ICE detention centers. This was a practice before Trump, but the president’s push to detain and deport immigrants increased his administration’s need for jail space beyond what’s available in federal ICE detention centers.
And for some local governments, the practice is an economic windfall.
In Kentucky, for example, public records show four county jails earned $2 million or more by holding people for ICE during Trump’s second term, as of April 2026. Some Kentucky jailers told KyCIR that the ICE earnings help offset the sizable costs of running their jail.
This investigation is supported by the Data-Driven Reporting Project.
