Keller’s new partnership with federal immigration authorities has already landed a dozen people in ICE custody, according to Mayor Armin Mizani, and the fallout is spreading far beyond city limits.
Mizani said this week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained 12 undocumented immigrants identified through the Keller Police Department’s recently formalized agreement with ICE. He said the cases stem from routine screenings of people booked into the city’s jail on alleged criminal charges, a process that has now become a flashpoint in the long-running fight over how closely local police should work with federal immigration agents.
Over roughly the past six months, the 12 detainees were flagged after being taken to the Keller regional detention facility, then turned over to ICE, according to the Fort Worth Report. Mizani said the people booked into the jail came from Keller and nearby departments that use the city’s lockup.
“Once handed to ICE, then that’s their jurisdiction,” Mizani wrote in messages to reporters, as reported by the Fort Worth Report. The city’s release listed the alleged offenses tied to the arrests, including possession of drug paraphernalia, counterfeit documents, fake license plates, driving while intoxicated, property theft and outstanding warrants.
How Keller's 287(g) Partnership Works
Under ICE’s 287(g) program, local officers can be trained and authorized to check the immigration status of people booked into jails and to flag those who may be removable for possible transfer to federal custody, according to ICE. Keller signed on to what is known as the Warrant Service Officer model, which focuses on serving administrative immigration warrants to people already behind bars rather than sending officers out to conduct day-to-day street immigration enforcement.
The Keller City Council voted unanimously in August 2025 to join 287(g), making Keller the largest Texas city to enter a formal partnership with ICE, The Dallas Morning News reported. At the time, city officials told reporters that the change would mean only minor tweaks to detention officers’ duties and would not give police broader power to stop or screen residents who are not already suspected of a crime.
County Connections and Local Practice
Tarrant County has been operating its own version of this model for years. The sheriff’s office has used a 287(g)-style screening program in county jails since 2017, with people booked into those facilities routinely checked for immigration status, according to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office. County officials say that program is aimed at people charged with more serious offenses and that ICE has the final say on whether anyone is moved into federal custody.
Why This Is Prompting Protests
The timing of Keller’s early results under the new agreement could hardly be more tense. The local detentions surfaced amid nationwide outrage after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, an incident that drew intense scrutiny and calls for investigations, according to the Associated Press. In Fort Worth, about 700 people took to the streets downtown to protest ICE’s actions, according to local TV coverage.
Legal and Political Fallout
State leaders have been moving policy in the opposite direction of those protesters. Lawmakers have pushed to broaden local participation in programs like 287(g), and last summer Texas adopted measures that pressure county sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, according to reporting by KERA. Critics who spoke at Keller’s council meeting, along with immigrant-rights advocates, warned that the partnership could discourage immigrants from reporting crimes and increase the risk of racial profiling, even as Mizani has said the city intends to remove people it labels “criminal illegal aliens,” according to local coverage.
City officials have said the chosen 287(g) model should come with minimal training needs and virtually no added costs, and that it mostly formalizes screening processes the jail was already using, Community Impact reported. Local advocacy groups say they will be watching to see how many people are ultimately transferred into federal custody and whether the city provides clear public data and safeguards around how those jail screenings are carried out.
