A third sheriff’s office in New Hampshire has applied for approval to help US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detain people accused of breaking federal immigration laws, as the Trump administration partners with a growing number of local police agencies to ramp up its enforcement efforts.
If the agreement with ICE is approved and finalized, then the sheriff’s office in Rockingham County — which stretches from the Seacoast communities of Portsmouth and Hampton to the inland towns of Derry and Salem — will establish a “task force model’’ under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which could allow sheriff’s deputies to question, detain, and arrest people based solely on their immigration status.
The sheriffs in Belknap and Grafton counties already signed such agreements, and an application that New Hampshire State Police submitted to ICE in February is still pending, according to the federal agency’s latest lists of participants and applicants.
While critics of these arrangements argue they could stoke fear among immigrant communities and undermine local law enforcement priorities, Republican Governor Kelly A. Ayotte has encouraged police agencies to cooperate with ICE, and she has called for state lawmakers to prohibit municipalities from adopting local policies that seek to impede such cooperation.
New Hampshire is a regional outlier. It’s the only New England state in which any sheriff’s office or state police force has applied for the ICE task force model.
While six municipal police departments in New Hampshire (Colebrook, Gorham, Ossipee, Pittsburgh, Troy, and Candia) have pursued such agreements, only one elsewhere in New England (Wells, Maine) has done so, and it has faced public pushback.
Major Christopher Bashaw, of the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office, said his team supports Ayotte’s position on this topic.
If approved, then up to 30 deputies would be able to receive immigration-related training and aid in enforcement, he said.
Bashaw said the impact on day-to-day operations is expected to be minimal, as deputies anticipate going about their normal duties and holding people who are found to have active immigration detainers.
“We do not anticipate any changes to our current duties and have no intention of pursuing detainees solely based on immigration status detainers,’’ he said.
The aggressive immigration crackdown being pursued by the Trump administration has recently resulted in high-profile errors.
American citizens have been wrongly detained in Arizona and Florida, and Kilmar Abrego García, who was granted a “withholding of removal’’ order in 2019, remains locked up in El Salvador after the Trump administration mistakenly sent him there.
Bashaw said he doesn’t see the sheriff’s office as being involved directly in the deportation process itself.
“Our understanding is that the ICE detainers are the mechanism to bring the individuals before the courts to ensure they receive due process related to their matter,’’ he said.
“If at any time the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office takes issue with the manner with how the program is being implemented, we can discontinue our partnership and participation.’’
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.
