The Oakwood and Flowery Branch police departments will help make immigration arrests, extending the reach of federal immigration enforcement inside Hall County, one of Georgia’s largest immigrant enclaves.
According to a document published by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Oakwood police formalized its partnership with federal agents earlier this week through ICE’s 287(g) program, which allows local police to perform some immigration enforcement functions. Flowery Branch police signed its own 287(g) agreement last month.
Participation in the program has grown at a rapid clip in Georgia during President Donald Trump’s second term. Before January 2025, only six Georgia law enforcement agencies had active 287(g) agreements with ICE. As of July 2026, that number stands at 69.
In addition to Oakwood and Flowery Branch police, the Hall County Sheriff’s Office is a 287(g) signatory, having entered into its current partnership with ICE in 2020. According to census data, 17% of Hall County residents are foreign-born, higher than the Georgia statewide average of 11%.
The 287(g) program’s expanding footprint in Hall County comes amid the dissolution of an ICE plan to convert two warehouses in the state into immigrant detention centers, including a property in Oakwood.
Credit: WSB TV
Credit: WSB TV
In the wake of an interview earlier this month with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Atlanta News First reported that the Oakwood warehouse will be offered to other federal government agencies before being put up for sale, as will all others purchased by the administration for its warehouse-to-detention-center plan. That includes a DHS-owned warehouse in Social Circle, a small town in Walton County.
At a July 13 City Council meeting after the Atlanta News First interview, Oakwood Mayor H. Lamar Scroggs said the city is prepared to take legal action should renovation or land-disturbing work begin at the property owned by the federal government, according to a statement shared with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The city loses all property tax revenue from the site under ownership of the federal government.
City officials have yet to hear directly from Mullin about plans for the warehouse, and have attempted to connect with the secretary through the White House, the mayor added.
Oakwood police Lt. Stewart Webb said the department entered into a 287(g) agreement with ICE because it was required to do so under state law.
The legislation in question, House Bill 1105, was signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2024 in the wake of a Georgia nursing student’s killing at the hands of an immigrant from Venezuela who had entered the country illegally. Among other provisions, HB 1105 says local agencies “shall seek” to participate in the 287(g) program or unspecified federal immigration enforcement partnerships.
“Partnering with federal agencies allows us to obtain additional free training on properly identifying a person’s immigration status and ensuring that we follow federally mandated procedures,” Webb said in a statement.
He added that all of the department’s officers are expected to partake in immigration-related duties. Participating local officers must complete specialized ICE training on immigration law, multicultural communication, avoiding racial profiling and other topics, according to the agency’s website.
“Our officers have frequent contact with immigrants. All officers are anticipated to be trained in order to better serve and protect the community,” Webb said.
Both Oakwood’s and Flowery Branch’s 287(g) agreements fall under the program’s “task force model” category, which ICE describes as a force multiplier because it allows police to stop, question and arrest immigrants they suspect of lacking legal status. It is separate from another 287(g) program, which requires jails to call ICE when undocumented immigrants are booked.
ICE says participating officers can “enforce limited immigration authority while performing routine police duties, or as an active participant in an ICE-led task force.”
The task force model had been discontinued for more than a decade before being revived under the Trump administration last year.
The Obama administration ended those partnerships in 2012, after a Department of Justice investigation uncovered widespread racial profiling and other discrimination against Latinos in Arizona by participating deputies.
In a statement, Flowery Branch police Chief Chris Hulsey cited HB 1105 as a reason to join ICE’s 287(g) program. He also said Flowery Branch police recently took part in a three-day law enforcement operation featuring local, state and federal law enforcement, including the Department of Homeland Security. The operation followed what Hulsey described as an uptick in crimes involving weapons and drugs, and yielded 59 arrests.
“During the operation, I personally witnessed the Homeland Security team at work. I was impressed with the fact that they were only seeking out illegal aliens that were troublemakers. I hear and watch the horror stories on the news about Homeland Security, but I didn’t see any of that during the operation,” Hulsey said. “They didn’t detain every person that was a non-citizen, they detained only the ones that have posed a public safety risk in this community.”
Four Flowery Branch police officers are now authorized to “screen individuals that are non-citizens,” Hulsey said.
He added that the department received “much needed resources” as a result of joining 287(g).
To incentivize participation in the task force model, ICE is offering to pay for the annual salary and benefits of each of the local officers designated by police agencies to carry out immigration enforcement tasks, including overtime coverage of up to 25% of officers’ annual salary.
ICE is also offering $7,500 for equipment for each participating officer, and $100,000 for new vehicles for each participating police department.
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