Christian County officers are among other local law enforcement agencies working in conjunction with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sheriff Brad Cole signed an agreement to work with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in April of 2025. Captain Colton Craig, of the Christian County Sheriff’s Office, oversees the program, called 287(g).
The 287(g) agreements authorize state and local law enforcement officers to perform functions that are normally executed by ICE officers, like checking for immigration status and making arrests.
“The agreement basically provides for a group of our officers to receive training from ICE,” Craig said. “We have the ability to execute arrest-based procedures.”
The 287(g) program was created through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which is an addition to the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“It’s been around for a long time,” Craig said. “However, with the president’s new initiative, it’s become more of a prevalent program, and the sheriff’s office opted in so that we could provide some assistance for the local immigration enforcement office here out of Springfield.”
The training for the agreement was self paced online and took 40 hours for officers to complete. Local sheriff’s deputies make arrests regularly on behalf of ICE.
“We probably have about 20 to 30 contacts a month,” Craig said. “… Some months we don’t have any. I think for the month of March, we’ve only had a couple. So it varies pretty widely.”
The 287(g) program has three models offered to local law enforcement in order to carry out various functions on behalf of ICE. Christian County has signed two agreements including a Warrant Service Officer model, although they currently operate only within the Task Force model.
“We have signed an agreement with them,” Craig said. “However we do not participate in that program. Any arrests that we affect or detainment that we affect based on immigration status is done working directly with an immigration officer. If we identify someone potentially being within the U.S. illegally, we contact an enforcement removal officer with the immigration office here in Springfield and double check and make sure that that is correct, and they actually issued the detainers or warrant for that person, at which time, then we take them into custody.”
While the Christian County Sheriff’s agreement with ICE largely went unpublicized, that wasn’t the case in Branson. Branson’s police force entered into the same agreement when the board of aldermen unanimously approved it Feb. 10 during a contentious public meeting. A select few of Branson’s police force will receive training from ICE.
“We had a whole bunch of speakers,” Glenn Schulz, Branson alderman said. “So, Branson may be somewhat unique in this regard. We do allow time on the agenda for anybody that’s present to speak to the topic. And so we’ve had – I don’t got an exact count – but I would guess maybe 50 or 60 people that wanted to speak about the topic. The far majority of those people that spoke were against it. It was also interesting for me to note that the people that were speaking against him primarily were non-residents of Branson.”
Founder of the Immigrant Justice Collaborative, Miles Pearson said that the IJC was one of three groups that mobilized to testify at the Branson meeting.
“We mobilized with Jobs with Justice and Young Communist League, and we had over 100 people at this meeting … to submit testimony on why this was a bad idea,” Pearson said.
Schulz said the agreement was brought up by the chief of police, Eric Schmitt, during a meeting with the board of aldermen.
“It isn’t in our interest, you know, just going in and running out undocumented immigrants or people that shouldn’t be here,” Schulz said. “It’s always going to be related to some other crime that’s being committed. And so, you know, we’re not going to be the department that stops somebody at a normal traffic stop and then, you know, checks them and sees that they’re an immigrant, and then … haul them off twice. That’s not the attempt at all. It would be in conjunction with some other crime that’s being committed.”
Greene County is one of only three counties in the state of Missouri to house ICE detainees in local jails. In response, local organizations have begun to emerge to address ICE’s growing presence in the area.
The Southern Missouri Immigration Alliance is a grassroots coalition focused on immigrant justice across the state, founded last July.
“[SMIA] is dedicated to advancing immigrant justice across Missouri by raising public awareness, dismantling harmful policies and offering direct support to immigrant communities,” the organization states on its website.
The group’s initial campaign was focused on ending the ICE contract at the Greene County Jail but has since expanded.
The Greene County Sheriff’s office has allotted 25 percent of its jail beds for detainees through an addition to a standing intergovernmental agreement with the United States Marshals Service.
“Missouri is technically not allowed to have [detention centers], but they can refer detainees to Greene County Jail, or the proper authorities,” Nicole Ambar De Santos, outreach director for SMIA, said.
Sheriff Jim Arnott of Greene County was contacted on Jan. 14 but did not respond to a request for an interview. According to a previous interview with OzarksFirst, Arnott said that he had no plans to lapse the contract despite heightened tensions in Minnesota earlier this year.
