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by Avi Asher-Schapiro, Mica Rosenberg and Jeff Ernsthausen ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. A Washington-based watchdog is calling for an inspector general investigation into potential conflicts of interest and ethics violations in the office of border czar Tom Homan related to government contracting.This follows reporting from ProPublica revealing a web of past business relationships involving Homan, his senior adviser Mark Hall, and consultants and firms seeking Department of Homeland Security contracts.The request by the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit nonpartisan government watchdog, also cites a story by MSNBC that reported that Homan had taken a $50,000 cash payment from undercover FBI agents posing as would-be DHS contractors seeking his help obtaining contracts.ProPublica revealed that Hall met this August with a company interested in winning contracts for immigrant detention centers. That meeting, at the Texas offices of a firm called Industrial Tent Systems, was also attended by Charlie Sowell, a consultant on ITS' payroll.Sowell had paid Hall a $50,000 consulting fee as recently as February - right before Hall entered the border czar's office working under Homan, government disclosure documents show.Sowell also had a business relationship with Homan. Before he became border czar, Homan had worked with Sowell's firm SE&M Solutions to advise clients seeking contracts with DHS, according to government documents and an interview with Sowell. In June, Sowell told ProPublica he and Homan avoided any conflicts of interest. Tom is an exceptionally ethical person," said Sowell, who has declined further interview requests.The August meeting between Hall, ITS and Sowell may have violated federal ethics laws and merits an independent investigation, according to CLC.When a senior official is involved in contracting decisions that stand to benefit a recent former employer, it raises serious questions about whether government decision making is impartial," the CLC wrote in its Oct. 16 letter to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.An IG investigation is needed to determine whether Hall's actions violate federal ethics laws." White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed calls for an inquiry into Homan's office. Tom has always operated with the utmost integrity and is working tirelessly to keep all Americans safe," she said, calling recent reports debunked left-wing talking points."Jackson has said that Homan has no involvement in the actual awarding of a government contract" and that Hall has not been authorized by Homan to represent him.Homan, Hall and the inspector general's office did not respond to requests for comment on the letter. Industrial Tent Systems has not responded to a comment request.Congress recently allocated $45 billion to massively expand immigration detention spaces, including plans to build an unprecedented series of tent camps on military bases across the country. The windfall of government money has drawn intense interest among DHS contractors and consultants, including some with past business relationships with Hall and Homan.Both men are bound by conflict-of-interest rules barring them from involvement in government discussions that could impact their former business partners, ethics experts have said.Homan has said repeatedly that he recused himself from all contracting matters. But ProPublica and Bloomberg have reported he has been involved in conversations with industry players about contracts. Neither DHS nor the White House would provide formal recusal documents sought by ProPublica. In a separate ethics complaint centering on Homan, the CLC asks the IG to investigate to determine if Homan intentionally excluded information from his financial disclosure statement in violation of federal criminal law."The ethics complaint alleges that if Homan received $50,000 from undercover FBI agents, it should have been reported on his financial disclosure forms.Homan has not only said he did nothing illegal, he recently maintained he never took the $50,000.This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors," Jackson said this week. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing."

by Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria This article was produced for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Manuel Nieto Jr. and his sister had just pulled into a gas station to buy cigarettes and Gatorade when he noticed a sheriff's deputy standing over two Latino men on the ground.Their north Phoenix neighborhood was on alert. Sheriff's deputies had been targeting day-labor centers in the area and making traffic stops - arresting people who couldn't prove their immigration status. They had one thing in common: They looked Latino.No diga nada. Pidale un abogado," Nieto's sister, Velia Meraz, yelled to the detained men, according to court testimony. (Don't say anything. Ask for an attorney.")The deputy warned Nieto and Meraz: You need to get out of here, now."Nieto drove around the corner to his dad's auto repair shop as another deputy on a motorcycle followed him, siren and lights on, and patrol vehicles swarmed. Deputies approached - guns drawn.Nieto dialed 911 for help: Officers were harassing him, he would later testify in court. One pulled Nieto from his vehicle. Others pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him.Nieto's father came running from his shop.Let my children go," Manuel Nieto Sr. said. They're U.S. citizens. What did they do wrong?"The raid that ensnared Nieto Jr. and Meraz 17 years ago was carried out under a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that grants local police powers to check immigration status during traffic stops and other routine encounters. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, under then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio, was among the first in the nation to test out ICE's 287(g) task force program.Since President Donald Trump retook office in January, similar scenes of local officers joining in aggressive immigration arrests have multiplied as ICE has rapidly expanded the 287(g) task force program to deputize local police officers as de facto deportation agents.Moments after Manuel Nieto Sr. stormed out of his north Phoenix auto shop, the deputies left without arresting or citing his children. But Nieto Jr. and Meraz didn't move on. They joined three other county residents in suing the sheriff's office, accusing deputies of targeting them solely because they were Latino.A federal judge agreed that the task force's traffic stops and raids on Hispanic neighborhoods, day-labor centers and other businesses had violated Latinos' civil and constitutional rights. Even after the ruling, the judge found Arpaio continued to detain people based solely on suspected civil immigration violations.The U.S. Department of Justice also conducted a civil rights investigation into the sheriff's office's discriminatory practices, and ICE ended Arpaio's 287(g) agreement. In 2012, ICE suspended all local police deportation task forces nationwide, only restarting them after Trump began his second term in January.Many Arizonans who lived through Arpaio's 287(g)-fueled immigration-enforcement campaign see parallels between what happened in Maricopa County and what's now playing out across the country as local officers join forces with ICE. They also foresee costly troubles for local agencies that follow in Maricopa County's footsteps, including difficulty regaining the trust of Latino residents whose constitutional rights are violated by local officers.The White House and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica's questions.Arpaio told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that he became a target of political persecution for helping enforce immigration laws, which he saw as part of his job.I'd do it over again," Arpaio said. I tell everybody: I didn't do anything wrong. I had a federal court who was biased against me. And all they could get me out on was a contempt of court? Think of that."Meanwhile, Maricopa County continues to reckon with its time allowing deputies to act as immigration officers.Under a settlement agreement, the court mandated broad oversight of the sheriff's office and appointed a monitor to track its compliance. Since then, the law enforcement agency has been required to meticulously document all interactions with the public. In the 12 years since, the department has yet to convince the judge that its deputies don't racially profile Latino drivers and that it adequately investigates deputies' alleged misconduct. Salvador Reza is a longtime community organizer who advocates for day laborers in Phoenix. He said his work put him in the crosshairs of Arpaio's immigration enforcement, leading to his arrest for obstruction during a protest. (The county declined to pursue charges against him.) Because of what happened in Maricopa County, he believes Latinos, including in the communities whose police departments have joined forces with ICE, are now more likely to be racially profiled.At that time, we were a laboratory," Reza said. They did the experiment, and basically now they're implementing it at the national level." Guadalupe, Arizona, where most residents are Latino or Native American, became one of Arpaio's targets for immigration enforcement, which escalated under a 287(g) task force agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Jesse Rieser for ProPublica) 368 Paragraphs on Required ReformsThe lawsuit brought by Nieto Jr., Meraz and the other county residents became known as Melendres v. Arpaio - for Manuel de Jesus Melendres Ortega, a legal resident who was arrested in one of Arpaio's sweeps.When U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow certified it as a class-action suit in December 2011, he indicated racial profiling by the sheriff's office had been so widespread it could have violated the constitutional rights of any Latino in Maricopa County, one-third of the population.The settlement contains 368 paragraphs outlining reforms. They range from creating a policy that bars racial profiling to developing a system that collects data on traffic stops to identify disparities in the race of motorists who are pulled over.To end court oversight, the sheriff's office must be in full and effective compliance" with the reforms continuously for three years. The department currently complies with more than 90% of the requirements, according to the monitor, but falls short in the two areas that most directly impact Latino drivers: eliminating racial bias in traffic stops and quickly investigating allegations of deputy misconduct.Snow found that traffic stops involving Latino drivers and passengers dragged on beyond the time necessary to resolve the issue that initially justified the stop."Ricardo Reyes said he repeatedly endured traffic stops as a young Latino growing up in the Maryvale neighborhood of west Phoenix, where three-quarters of the residents identify as Latino. He drove a nice car and believes deputies under Arpaio racially profiled him.They would ask me for my license, they take it and then, You're free to go,'" recalled Reyes, who leads an advocacy group for military veterans. Why was I stopped? I never got an answer."Snow's order requires deputies to document 13 data points for every traffic interaction, including when a stop began and ended, the reason for the stop, the driver's perceived race and whether the deputy inquired about immigration status. The settlement overseen by U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow includes hundreds of pages of reforms that the sheriff's office must implement, including developing a policy to bar racial profiling and to create a data collection system for traffic stops. (Obtained by ProPublica) In a preliminary injunction, Snow wrote that sheriff's deputies, including officers associated with the special operations, circulated emails that compared Mexicans to dogs, ridiculed stereotypical Mexican accents, and portrayed Mexicans as drunks."He singled out two of the deputies Nieto Jr. and Meraz encountered in north Phoenix for making arrests based on race during 287(g) operations. Roughly 77% of all arrests by the first deputy the siblings saw at the gas station had Hispanic surnames, the judge found. The deputy who pulled over Nieto Jr. arrested only Latinos during the operations he participated in.Even more concerning to Snow was that Arpaio continued such operations as a matter of policy after ICE pulled its 287(g) agreement in 2009. In other words, deputies continued making immigration arrests without authority from the federal government. The judge said that violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizures.After Arpaio defied the order and refused to implement many of the reforms, Snow issued additional mandates in 2016. He also found Arpaio and three of his aides in civil contempt of court and referred all four to face criminal contempt charges, a misdemeanor. Another federal judge convicted only Arpaio of criminal contempt in 2017 and was set to sentence him to up to six months in jail. Two months before sentencing, Trump pardoned Arpaio. However, voters had already voted Arpaio out of office.His successors have faced the same oversight and have not fully complied with the court's orders, according to the monitor's reports.Kevin Johnson, an immigration law author and professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law who runs the Immigration Professor's Blog, said settlements related to discrimination and civil rights violations often take a long time to resolve. He pointed to the 28-year-old Flores settlement, which still dictates the federal government's treatment of children in border and immigration custody. There may be complaints about the court monitoring, but the burden is on the leaders and the agencies to show that monitoring is no longer necessary," he said.This January, newly elected Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, a Republican who had worked as Arpaio's second-in-command, inherited the Melendres settlement. He argues the department has made enough progress to end the judge's oversight.Snow acknowledged recently in court that Sheridan and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office had made significant gains. But the areas where he's not in compliance are pretty important areas," he said.The sheriff's office analyzes traffic stop data quarterly to identify deputies with notable disparities in who they stop. An outside auditor evaluates annually any departmentwide disparities.The latest annual report shows improvements over the past decade, but also that deputies still arrest Latino drivers at higher rates than white drivers. Data from this past year also show that Black drivers, who are not covered by the Melendres settlement, face longer stop times and higher arrest rates. And all drivers of color are more likely to be searched than white drivers.In addition, the sheriff's office acknowledged it has not investigated 640 deputy misconduct claims, some dating to 2015, according to the department's most recent court filing. Snow had ordered that the backlog be cleared to hold the sheriff's office more accountable after he found that Arpaio refused to implement many reforms.Raul Pina, a retired educator, witnessed the fear caused by Arpaio's raids in his Latino-majority school district and surrounding neighborhoods in Maryvale. He has for the past decade served on the court-mandated Community Advisory Board, tasked with relaying to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office any community concerns about policing that may violate the court orders.Pina says the department hasn't done enough to regain the trust of Latino residents and its deputies continue targeting Latinos disproportionately. He worries that without court oversight, the department will backslide on policing based on skin color.I strongly believe that the only thing holding MCSO back from a very public and enthusiastic participation in workplace raids and other forms of anti-immigrant practices - the only thing holding them back - is Melendres," he said. David Redpath, research director for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's Court Implementation Division, discusses data on traffic stops during a town hall meeting. (Jesse Rieser for ProPublica) The Model Was Maricopa County"Nationwide, ICE now has more than a thousand 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement. Half are task force agreements like the one Arpaio deployed.In May, the Tennessee Highway Patrol was carrying out a task force operation in Nashville when troopers pulled over Edgardo David Campos, who had just left a vigil at his church. Campos pulled into a gas station south of the airport, where a swarm of uniformed and plainclothes immigration officers wearing green vests with the word police" on the back surrounded his car. One began to pull him out of his vehicle, a video of the incident shows, drawing the attention of people nearby, including Dinora Romero. She grabbed her phone and began to record.Si se lo llevan, no diga nada," Romero yelled. (If they take you, don't say anything.")ICE touted the Nashville operation as a success, even though the agency's data showed more than half the nearly 200 people arrested had no criminal record.Advocates accused ICE and the Highway Patrol of using race and ethnicity to target drivers in Nashville's Latino and immigrant neighborhoods. One in four residents of the neighborhood where Campos was stopped is Latino. In August, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition filed a lawsuit against the Highway Patrol seeking access to public records about the May sweeps.Attorneys for the state argued in court that releasing those records would endanger officers. The Highway Patrol and state attorney general did not respond to requests for comment.With enforcement expanding, U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained recently, like Nieto Jr. and Meraz were in 2008. In May, an 18-year-old Latino citizen recorded his arrest during an operation by the Florida Highway Patrol and Border Patrol targeting landscapers in West Palm Beach under a 287(g) agreement. He was released after six hours.In a statement, DHS said the teen was part of a group of illegal aliens that resisted arrest during a traffic stop." The Florida Highway Patrol said he interfered" with a lawful investigation and was charged with obstruction. State prosecutors declined to pursue the charge, citing insufficient evidence."The Trump administration is trying to enlist even more local officers to help ICE and is offering financial incentives for departments that participate in the 287(g) program. Starting this month, the federal government will pay the salaries of officers certified under 287(g) agreements and offer performance awards" of up to $1,000 for helping ICE with arrests and deportations.Meanwhile, the Trump administration has gutted federal offices that investigate police misconduct and civil rights violations.Advocates say some of the tactics used by local and federal officers to target Latinos in Trump's deportation effort draw from Arpaio's playbook. Raul Pina serves on a court-mandated community advisory board tasked with relaying to the sheriff's office any residents' concerns about policing that may violate the court's orders. He said he is worried that without the oversight required by a settlement order, the department will backslide. (Jesse Rieser for ProPublica) The model was Maricopa County," said Pina, the advisory board member in the Maricopa County lawsuit.The very public, very humiliating, demoralizing approach to the raids, and the cruelty - more than just the images in the television that were humiliating, it was the cruelty - and the violent apprehension of people in front of children," Pina added. All of those behaviors. All of those tactics. They stem from Maricopa County."Arpaio said he did not want to take credit for the Trump administration's work but was proud that deputies under his command were among the first local officers to help ICE make immigration arrests.In Florida, which has more departments with 287(g) agreements than any other state, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent $245 million to set up a temporary detention center nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. There, migrants are housed in chain-link cells inside tents. Some have compared it to Arpaio's Tent City," where prisoners were held outdoors in sweltering desert temperatures. (It closed after Arpaio lost reelection in 2016.)In California, federal agents have focused on Home Depot stores, arresting people in parking lots - echoing Arpaio's raids on day laborers. Maricopa County deputies, after getting 287(g) certified in 2007, carried out 11 immigration sweeps within five months outside a former furniture store in Phoenix that was a popular gathering spot for laborers. Snow noted that nearly everyone arrested there was Latino.Trump is creating this complete culture of fear and terror in our community. And I think this is exactly what happened under Arpaio, with the workplace raids and the threat of deportation," said Christine Wee, lead attorney for American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Nieto Jr., Meraz and Melendres. First image: The courtyard of then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City Jail." Some have compared a Florida detention center nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz" to Arpaio's notorious jail, which closed after he left office. Second image: Maricopa County sheriff's deputies check the shoes of an individual arrested in an immigration sweep under Arpaio. (First image: Charlie Riedel/AP Photo. Second image: AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin.) In July, a group that includes U.S. citizens, detained immigrants and advocacy groups sued the Trump administration, arguing that indiscriminate" raids in Los Angeles targeted people with brown skin. A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order, barring immigration arrests based on race, speaking Spanish, type of employment or presence at a particular location.But on Sept. 8, the Supreme Court stayed the order in a 6-3 vote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the lone conservative justice to explain his decision. He affirmed the government can use a combination of factors like race and language to establish reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country unlawfully during the operations in Los Angeles. To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court's case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a relevant factor,'" Kavanaugh wrote.Even though the case continues, immigration advocates and the attorneys who filed the lawsuit said the court's action essentially legalized racial profiling.Experts say that approach could filter down to local agencies partnering with ICE under the 287(g) program. When you have ICE relying on racial profiling and promoting it as an effective immigration enforcement strategy, you can expect state local governments that are working with ICE to use race immigration enforcement," said Johnson, the UC Davis law professor.That idea was echoed in Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent to the ruling lifting the order in the Los Angeles case. She argued the decision makes all Latinos, including U.S. citizens, targets and improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely." Sotomayor added, The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status."Arpaio said he believes that had the Supreme Court rendered such a decision two decades ago, the Melendres lawsuit and the legal troubles that followed would not have happened.I was vindicated by the Supreme Court," Arpaio said. Everything they went after me is legal."Civil rights experts dispute that, noting that Arpaio's enforcement relied on race alone, which remains illegal. Sheridan believes the department has made enough progress to end court oversight stemming from a racial profiling lawsuit. (Jesse Rieser for ProPublica) It Seems Like It's Never-Ending"As the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office struggles to fully implement the court-mandated reforms, elected officials are losing patience with the requirements and the costs.By March, spending on the Melendres case and the implementation of its reforms had surpassed $300 million, the bulk of which - nearly $245 million - has gone to the sheriff's office.Sheridan, the new sheriff, attributed those expenses to the creation of two divisions for implementing the settlement and the hiring of investigators to tackle the backlog of complaints against deputies. Thirty million dollars has gone to the monitor team since the monitor was appointed in 2013.In 2024, the last full fiscal year for which data is available, the county spent more than $39 million on the settlement. That's a recurring cost every year in perpetuity," Sheridan said. Or at least until the settlement ends.But a report commissioned by Snow last year and published on Oct. 8 found that the sheriff's office had consistently overstated" costs attributed to compliance under the Melendres settlement.Sheridan questioned the report, telling Phoenix talk radio station KTAR that its authors don't have the expertise" to audit a large government agency. He said his office will hire an independent accountant to dispute the findings. There's no fraud here," he said.The Republican majority on the county's Board of Supervisors is calling for an immediate end to court oversight.We just have to figure out a way to end this because it seems like it's never-ending because the judge, they put on a new order, they change things, they move the goalposts, and so we need to resolve this," Republican Supervisor Debbie Lesko, who represents communities policed by the sheriff's office, told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica.But the decision to end court oversight rests solely with Snow. During a recent hearing, the judge was clearly unhappy with a recent community meeting. The court-mandated meetings provide the plaintiffs - all Latino drivers in Maricopa County - a venue to get updates on progress toward reforms and to voice concerns to the sheriff and the monitor team.At the July gathering, Sheridan's supporters packed the room and took control, shouting at speakers and interrupting the interpreter's translations of the discussion into Spanish. The mostly older, white group of Sheridan supporters demanded an end to court oversight, citing the costs. They outnumbered the Latino community members and activists who want to keep the monitor in place until the sheriff's office proves to Snow it no longer discriminates against Latinos.Snow said he would host the next community meeting inside the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix. Sheridan also wants out of the settlement. He believes the strict mandates hinder deputies' ability to do their jobs. There's no law enforcement agency that I'm aware of in this country under the same level of scrutiny," Sheridan said.Latino advocates and community members worry complaints about the court mandates and the price tag will become an excuse, distracting from the root issue - the need to end racial profiling by the sheriff's office.When Sheridan tells us that it's done, I'm not going to take his word for it," said Reyes, who endured repeated traffic stops when Arpaio was sheriff. I'm going to wait on the monitor. I'm going to wait for the judge. And when they say, You know what? They are compliant.' Then I'll believe it. And even then, it's going to be suspicious." Chelsea Curtis of Arizona Luminaria contributed reporting. Gabriel Sandoval of ProPublica contributed research.

by Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria This article was produced for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Arizona law enforcement agencies are largely rejecting a fast-growing ICE program that lets local officers act as deportation agents - citing the experience of the state's largest sheriff's office, which was booted from the program in 2009 after a federal judge found deputies racially profiled and violated the constitutional rights of Latinos.Even in Republican-led communities known for backing immigration measures, law enforcement leaders are steering clear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's 287(g) task force program, which the Trump administration is using to enlist local officers in its mass deportation efforts.Of at least 106 municipal police departments, sheriff's offices and county attorneys in the state, nine currently have agreements to cooperate with ICE in making arrests, as of Oct. 15. And only four Arizona departments have signed on since January, amid a national recruitment campaign that has prompted more than 900 agencies to join. The program's explosive nationwide growth follows President Donald Trump's Jan. 20 executive order that, among other things, called for local law enforcement to perform the functions of immigration officers."Local police have three ways of participating in the 287(g) program. The first two are through the Jail Enforcement and Warrant Service Officer models, which restrict local collaboration with ICE to people who've already been booked into their jails. The third way is through the Task Force Model, in which local officers serve as a force multiplier" in federal immigration enforcement during routine police duties," according to ICE.ICE did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica's questions.Half of the agreements in Arizona are for jail enforcement, including the state's prison system, the only statewide agency. It signed on in 2020. The Republican sheriffs of two Arizona counties that border Mexico, Yuma and Cochise, signed 287(g) warrant service agreements for their jails this year, along with Navajo County, in the far northeast part of the state.The only local agency in Arizona to sign a task force agreement since ICE revived them in January is the County Attorney's Office of Pinal County, a Republican stronghold sandwiched between the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.ICE, under the Obama administration, suspended all task force agreements in 2012. The move followed a Department of Justice investigation that found the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which had a task force agreement under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, used discriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos." In 2013, a federal judge ruled that under Arpaio the sheriff's office had discriminated against Latinos during immigration enforcement operations, violating their Fourth and 14th amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures and to equal protection under the law, respectively.I've never been guilty of anything," Arpaio told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica, despite the judge's rulings. They went after me. But that's OK. And you can tell your audience I'll do it again."Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller, a Republican, said he intends to certify four deputies under the task force agreement he signed in August. Miller said these investigators will process immigration violations involving people they encounter during child abuse and drug investigations, instead of waiting on ICE officers. He said he does not foresee them participating in ICE raids.Miller prosecuted sex crimes in Maricopa County when Arpaio's 287(g) task force agreement was in effect. He said he remembers the chaos that ensued from that" and doesn't want it repeated in Pinal County. We have zero intention and we will not be participating in any immigration raids or task forces. I just want to make that clear."Miller said he spoke with federal officials his agency works with before signing the task force agreement.Would we be required to join specifically an immigration task force?' That was my first question, and the answer came back as no," he said. If that were one of the prerequisites, I was not going to do the program."Starting in October, ICE began reimbursing local agencies with task force agreements for the salaries of certified officers and paying performance awards" of up to $1,000 per officer.Miller said money didn't influence his decision. None of his four deputies will be assigned full time to the 287(g) agreement, he said, only as needed in the course of their other task force investigations.Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway, a Democrat, believes the financial incentives are a federal ploy to pull local officers away from their everyday duties and direct them to immigration enforcement.I consider the program to be illegal," said Hathaway, whose county shares a border with Mexico. He bases this view on court rulings on Arizona's landmark 2010 anti-illegal immigration law. The show me your papers" law was the toughest state immigration law in the nation at the time. But the Supreme Court struck down most of its provisions, leaving in place only one that allows local police to check immigration status as long as it doesn't prolong the public's interaction with officers.The Supreme Court said this is not in the realm of local law enforcement," Hathaway said. This is entirely a federal issue."States including Texas and Florida have since enacted laws to more aggressively curb illegal immigration. Florida was also among the first to require all county law enforcement agencies to sign on to the 287(g) program. Other states, largely in the Southeast, have followed suit.Arizona's Republican-controlled Legislature this year passed a similar requirement for its local law enforcement agencies called the Arizona ICE Act. But the state's Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed it.Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, a Democrat who runs southern Arizona's largest sheriff's department, has vowed not to involve his deputies in deportation arrests. The county shares a 130-mile border with Mexico. Nanos has said his department is instead focused on preventing crime, and to do that it's imperative his deputies build trust with communities they protect, including migrant ones.The stance we take is: Look, you have a job to do and I have a job to do,'" Nanos says in a video released by his office this year. But clearly immigration laws, enforcement of those laws, that is the federal government's job."In Maricopa County, home to a majority of Arizona's population, Sheriff Jerry Sheridan says he's hesitant to have his deputies certified to patrol with ICE, mainly because his office remains under strict court oversight related to its past experiment with the 287(g) program. But Sheridan has endorsed the ICE program's work inside local jails and said that's where Maricopa County got it right on cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. They're focusing on the criminal illegal aliens," he said of local jail partnerships with ICE. And that's really what a law enforcement agency should be concerned with, is people that commit crimes here in Maricopa County. And that's what I'm concerned with."Sheridan is working to rebuild trust with Latinos that was broken by Arpaio's raids and sweeps, beginning when the sheriff's office entered a 287(g) agreement.For Hathaway, the Santa Cruz county sheriff, lost trust is his biggest concern with deputies enforcing immigration laws in a border county that's 83% Latino.I don't want to have any animosity between the local population and our sheriff's office," he said. I want them to trust us and not think just because they're Hispanic, we're chasing them."

by Andy Kroll ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Join us Nov. 5 for a virtual discussion about our yearlong investigation into Russell Vought. Register now. On the second day of the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the classic song (Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. The star of that video, which quickly went viral, was Russell Vought, the president's top budget adviser. More than that, Vought is the architect of Trump's broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies, and he's a big reason the second Trump administration has been more effective at accomplishing its goals than the first. In the video shared by Trump, Vought appeared as the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper of Washington, D.C.Vought's title is director of the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB directorship is one of the most powerful jobs in Washington, and Vought has used his position to wage a quiet war to change the shape of the entire U.S. government. In Vought's hands, OMB has acted as a choke point for the funding that Congress approves and agencies rely on to run the government. While he tends to operate behind the scenes as much as possible, his influence in Trump's second administration is so pronounced that people have described him as akin to a shadow president.Here are some of the key things you should know about Vought. Read ProPublica's full investigation here. (Vought declined to be interviewed for the article. A spokesperson for him at OMB would not comment on the record in response to a detailed list of questions.) 1. Vought went from the mail room to becoming the chief antagonist of his own party. A native of Trumbull, Connecticut, and the son of an electrician father and a mother who spent decades in public education before helping to launch a Christian school, Vought got his first job in D.C. politics working in the mail room for Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a fierce budget hawk known for criticizing members of his own party for breaking what he viewed as core conservative principles.As Vought rose through the GOP ranks, eventually going on to advise then-Rep. Mike Pence, he grew disillusioned with members of his party who claimed to care about balanced budgets and spending cuts yet voted to approve bills loaded with pork-barrel spending and corporate giveaways.In 2010, he quit Congress and helped launch an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation think tank called Heritage Action for America, which was tasked with strong-arming congressional Republicans to act more conservatively.I think he thought the Republican leadership was a bigger impediment to conservative causes than Democrats were," a former Capitol Hill colleague of Vought's said. 2. OMB's massive power supercharges Vought's influence. While the Office of Management and Budget is part of the White House, Vought is a member of Trump's cabinet along with the secretary of defense and attorney general. OMB director has little of the cachet of those jobs, but it plays a vital role. Every penny appropriated by Congress first passes through the OMB. It also reviews all significant regulations proposed by federal agencies, vets executive orders before the president signs them and issues workplace policies for more than 2 million federal employees.Every goddam thing in the executive branch goes through OMB," explained Sam Bagenstos, a former OMB official during the Biden administration. 3. Vought's early work at OMB helped lead to Trump's first impeachment. This isn't Vought's first stint as OMB director; he held the same position during the first Trump administration.In 2019, after the Trump White House pressured Ukraine's government to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, it asked Vought, then acting director, to freeze $214 million in congressionally approved security assistance for Ukraine. He obliged.This impoundment, later deemed illegal by the Government Accountability Office, would trigger congressional investigations and, ultimately, Trump's first impeachment. During that process, Vought refused to cooperate with investigators, calling the probe a sham process that is designed to relitigate the last election."After the attempt to freeze the Ukraine funds ultimately failed, Vought and Mark Paoletta, an attorney and close ally of Vought's, spent the years between Trump's presidencies developing a legal argument that not only are such impoundments legal, but there is a long history of presidents using the power. (Legal experts have disputed Vought's version of that history.) 4. Vought played a surprising role in popularizing the phrase woke and weaponized." In 2021, Vought launched the Center for Renewing America, a think tank devoted to keeping the MAGA movement alive and preparing for a second Trump presidency. According to previously unreported recordings obtained by ProPublica, Vought accepted an assignment from Trump to come up with a way for conservatives to counter Black Lives Matter. He popularized the concept of woke and weaponized" government -a phrase embraced by GOP politicians and activists to disparagingly label policies, people and even agencies that didn't fit with the MAGA agenda.If you're watching television and the words woke and weaponized' come out of a politician's mouth, you can know that this is coming ... from the strategies we're putting out," Vought boasted in a recording obtained by ProPublica.When Vought's think tank released a federal budget blueprint in 2022, calling for $9 trillion in cuts over 10 years, the word woke" appeared 77 times across its 103 pages. 5. Vought's vision for what would become Project 2025 began during Trump's first term. In 2017, while an adviser at OMB, Vought played a lead role in trying to implement a Trump executive order that called for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal government. A former OMB senior staffer said Vought initially wanted to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to fold the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with food stamps programs, into a new Department of Welfare. They wanted to call it that because they think it sounds bad," a former OMB analyst said. There were very few, if any, debates where Russ wouldn't take the most extreme option available to him, the most conservative, the most budget-cutting."Trump's Cabinet secretaries at the time resisted wholesale cuts, and few of the plans reached fruition. But Vought's suggestions now read like a guide to the second Trump administration, which has gutted both USAID and the CFPB and is hollowing out the Department of Education.I didn't realize it then," the former OMB staffer said, but I was writing the first draft of Project 2025." 6. Vought's role shows Project 2025 has indeed shaped the administration. Vought was a key figure in the work of Project 2025, the coalition of conservative groups that created a roadmap and recruited future appointees for the next Republican administration. He led Project 2025's transition portion, which included writing some 350 executive orders, regulations and other plans to more fully empower the president. I don't want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral," Vought said in a private 2024 speech.During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed to have nothing to do with Project 2025. His campaign aides criticized the initiative, and news reports suggested that Project 2025 leaders would be blacklisted from working in the Trump White House.But Vought deftly navigated the controversy, and Trump brought him back to OMB. Meanwhile, the administration has moved quickly to fulfill many of Project 2025's policy objectives. Early on in this month's government shutdown, when Trump announced that he would soon meet with Vought to decide which Democrat Agencies" to temporarily or permanently cut, he referred to his budget director as Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame." 7. Elon Musk and DOGE often acted at Vought's direction, insiders say. Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO and the world's wealthiest person, may have grabbed the headlines as his Department of Government Efficiency took a chainsaw to budgets and staffing. But court records, interviews and other accounts from people close to Vought show that DOGE's efforts were guided, more than previously known, by the OMB director.I can't imagine that the DOGE team knew to target all these little parts of the government without Russ pointing them there," a former OMB branch chief told ProPublica. In May, an official with Citizens for Renewing America, a group founded by Vought, credited Vought with steering DOGE's cuts. DOGE is underneath the OMB," the official said, according to a video of her remarks. Honestly, a lot of what Elon began pinpointing ... was at the direction of Russ."An administration official who has worked with Vought and Musk told ProPublica that DOGE showed Vought that it was possible to ignore legal challenges and take dramatic action. He has the benefit of Elon softening everyone up," the official said. Elon terrified the shit out of people. He broke the status quo." 8. Vought has used OMB to try to pressure Democrats into reaching a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown. Vought has frozen $26 billion in federal funding for infrastructure and clean energy projects in blue states in the days after the federal government shut down on Oct. 1. The government has also followed through on Vought's earlier threat to fire a massive number of civil servants if the shutdown were not averted.We work for the president of the United States," a senior agency official who regularly deals with the OMB told ProPublica. But right now, he added, it feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief." Kirsten Berg contributed research.

by Audrey Dutton ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Three women become choked up as they deliver news in a video posted to social media. We did it, everybody," says Leslie Manookian, the woman in the middle. She is a driving force in a campaign that has chipped away at the foundations of modern public health in Idaho. The group had just gotten lawmakers to pass what she called the first true medical freedom" bill in the nation. It's literally landmark," Manookian said. It is changing everything."With Manookian in the video are two of her allies, the leaders of Health Freedom Idaho. It was April 4, hours after the governor signed the Idaho Medical Freedom Act into law. Watch Leslie Manookian and Allies Celebrate Idaho Medical Freedom Act (Health Freedom Idaho via Rumble) Watch video The act makes it illegal for state and local governments, private businesses, employers, schools and day cares to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive any other medical intervention."Whether the law will actually alter day-to-day life in Idaho is an open question, because Idaho already made it easy to get around the few existing vaccination requirements.But it could have a significant effect in other states, where rules aren't already so relaxed. And it comes at a time when diseases once eradicated from the U.S. through vaccination are making a resurgence.The law runs against one of the hallmarks of modern public health: that a person's full participation in society depends on their willingness to follow certain rules. (Want to send your child to public school? They'll need a measles vaccine. Want to work in a retirement community during flu season? You might have to wear a mask.)The new Idaho law flips that on its head. It not only removes the obligation to follow such rules, it makes the rules themselves illegal. The new law sets Idaho apart from even conservative-leaning South Carolina, where two schools recently quarantined more than 150 unvaccinated children after measles arrived.A person can spread measles for four days before symptoms appear. During the South Carolina schools' quarantine, five students began to show symptoms, but the quarantine kept them from spreading it, the health department said this month.That precaution would now be illegal in Idaho.Idaho's law caught the attention of people who share Manookian's belief that - contrary to hundreds of years of public health evidence and rigorous regulation in the U.S. - vaccines are worse than the diseases they prevent.It also caught the attention of people like Jennifer Herricks, a pro-vaccine advocate in Louisiana and advocacy director for American Families for Vaccines.Herricks and her counterparts in other states say that vaccine requirements have done so much good for our kids and for our communities."An analysis published last year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that routine childhood vaccines prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations in the U.S. over three decades, saving $540 billion in direct costs and saving society about $2.7 trillion. The analysis was limited; it didn't account for the lives and money saved by vaccines for flu or RSV, which kill and hospitalize babies and children each year.Idaho's move was pretty concerning," Herricks said, especially seeing the direction that everything is headed at the federal government."The law is the culmination of a decade of anti-vaccine activism that got a boost from the pandemic.It's rooted in a belief system that distrusts institutions - government health agencies, vaccine makers, medical societies and others - on the premise that those institutions seek only money and control.Manookian said in an interview that she believes one person should never be told to risk their health in the theoretical" service of another.Now, Manookian and her allies have a new goal in their sights: to make Idaho's legislation a nationwide standard.Idaho was already more permissive than other states when it came to vaccine rules. Parents since at least the 1990s could send unvaccinated children to school if they signed a form saying vaccination went against their religious or personal beliefs.That wasn't good enough for Idahoans who describe themselves as advocates for health freedom. They worked to shift the paradigm, bit by bit, so that it can be easier now for parents to get a vaccine exemption than to show the school their child is actually vaccinated.In recent years, lawmakers ordered schools and day care centers to tell parents about the exemptions allowed in Idaho whenever they communicate about immunizations.The state also decided to let parents exempt their kids by writing a note, instead of having to fill out a form - one that, in the past, required them to acknowledge the risks of going unvaccinated.(There is conflicting data on whether these changes truly affected vaccination rates or just led more parents to skip the trouble of handing in vaccine records. Starting in 2021, Idaho schools reported a steady drop in the share of kindergartners with documented vaccinations. Phone surveys of parents, by contrast, showed vaccination rates have been largely unchanged.)An enduring backlash against Idaho's short-lived COVID-19 mandates gave Manookian's movement more momentum, culminating this year in what she considered the ultimate step in Idaho's evolution.Manookian had a previous career in finance in New York and London. She transitioned to work as a homeopath and advocate, ultimately returning to her home state of Idaho.The bill she came up with said that almost nobody can be required to have a vaccine or take any test or medical procedure or treatment in order to go to school, get a job or go about life how they'd like to. In practice, that would mean schools couldn't send unvaccinated kids home, even during a measles outbreak, and private businesses and day cares couldn't require people on their property to follow public health guidance.The state had just passed the Coronavirus Stop Act" in 2023, which banned nearly all COVID-19 vaccine requirements. If lawmakers did that for COVID-19, Manookian reasoned, they could do the same for all communicable diseases and all medical decisions. Leslie Manookian (Courtesy of Leslie Manookian) Her theory was right, ultimately.The bill she penned in the summer of 2024 made it through the Republican-controlled House and Senate in early 2025.Manookian took to social media to rally support for the legislation as it sat on the desk of Gov. Brad Little.But the governor vetoed it. In a letter, he explained that he saw the bill as government intrusion on parents' freedom to ensure their children stay healthy." During an outbreak, he said, schools wouldn't be able to send home students with highly contagious conditions" like measles.Manookian tried again days after the veto. In the next version of the bill, protections during a disease outbreak applied only to healthy" people.This time, Little signed it.Weeks after the signing, Manookian joined like-minded advocates on a stage in Washington, D.C., for a launch event for the MAHA Institute, a group with strong ties to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (MAHA stands for Make America Healthy Again.) The new Health and Human Services secretary had denounced vaccines for years before President Donald Trump appointed him.At the gathering, Manookian announced her next mission: to make it a societal norm and to codify it in law" that nobody can dictate any other person's medical choices.We're going to roll that out to other states, and we're going to make America free again," Manookian told the audience in May.Manookian's commitment to bring along the rest of the country has continued ever since. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited an Idaho farm with Leslie Manookian and several of her allies in the health freedom" movement this past summer. (Screenshot by ProPublica) Her nonprofit, the Health Freedom Defense Fund, is now distributing model legislation and a how-to guide, with talking points to persuade legislators. Manookian said in podcast interviews that she is working with the nonprofit Stand For Health Freedom to mobilize activists in every state.In an interview with ProPublica, Manookian said her objective is for people to understand and appreciate that the most basic and fundamental of human rights is the right to direct our own medical treatment - and to codify that in law in every state. Breaking that barrier in Idaho proves that it can be done, that Americans understand the importance of this, and the humanity of it, and that it should be done in other states."Her efforts were rewarded over the summer with a visit from none other than Kennedy, who visited Boise and toured a farm with Manookian and state lawmakers in tow.This state, more than any other state in the country" aligns with the MAHA campaign, Kennedy told reporters at a news conference where no one was allowed to ask questions. Kennedy called Idaho the home of medical freedom."The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to ProPublica's request for comment from Kennedy or his staff on Idaho's law and his visit to the state.Children's Health Defense, the organization Kennedy built into one of the fiercest foes of childhood vaccines, took interest in the Idaho bill early on.The group promoted the bill as it sat on the governor's desk, as he vetoed it, then as Manookian worked successfully to get a revived bill through the statehouse and signed into law.The organization's online video programming featured Manookian five times in late March and early April. One show's host told viewers they could follow Idaho in its very smart strategy" of taking a law against COVID-related mandates, crossing out COVID,' making a few other tweaks, and you have an incredible health freedom bill after that."Children's Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said she's known Manookian for more than 15 years and pushed the national organization to publicize Manookian's work. Holland introduced her at the Washington, D.C., event.Whereas most states put the onus on unvaccinated people to show why they should opt out of a mandate, Idaho's legislation made unvaccinated people the norm - shifting the burden of accommodation onto those who support vaccination.Now, parents of infants too young for a measles vaccine can't choose a day care that requires immunization. Parents of immune-compromised students must decide whether to keep their children home from school during an outbreak of vaccine-preventable diseases, knowing unvaccinated children won't be quarantined.Holland said Idaho parents who want their kids to be in a learning environment with herd immunity" levels of measles vaccination can start a private association" - not a school, because schools can't require vaccines - just as parents who don't like vaccines have done in order to dodge requirements imposed by states like California and New York.I think you could certainly do that in Idaho." Holland said. It wouldn't be a public school. It might be the Church of Vaccinia school." The Idaho Capitol building, before Gov. Brad Little's press conference with Kennedy this past July. (Otto Kitsinger for ProPublica) The day Idaho's Medical Freedom Act was signed, a legislator in Louisiana brought forward the Louisiana Medical Freedom Act. In a hearing later, she pointed to Idaho as a model.Louisiana followed Idaho once before in 2024, when it passed a law that requires schools to describe the exemptions available to parents whenever they communicate about immunizations. Idaho had passed an almost identical law three years earlier.Herricks, the Louisiana pro-vaccine advocate, said she watched the Idaho Medical Freedom Act's progress with a lot of concern, seeing how much progress it was making." Now it's set a precedent, Herricks said.Holland, the Children's Health Defense CEO, said she looks forward to Idaho's approach spreading.She pointed to a September announcement by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo that he intends to rid his state of all vaccine mandates. Holland said she expects other Republican-controlled states to take a serious look at the Idaho law. (Ladapo's office did not respond to requests for comment.)It's a big change," Holland said. It's not just related to vaccines. It's a blow against the notion that there can be compulsory medicine."Some people support the more-than-century-old notion that compelling people to be vaccinated or masked will provide such enormous collective benefits that it outweighs any inconvenience or small incursion on personal liberty.Others, like Holland and Manookian, do not.At the heart of laws like Idaho's is a sense of, I'm going to do what I want to do for myself, and I don't want anybody telling me what to do,' which is in direct contrast to public health," said Paul Offit, pediatrician and vaccinologist at the University of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.Offit, who co-invented a vaccine against rotavirus, is a critic of Kennedy and was removed from a federal vaccine panel in September.A more fundamental conflict is that some people believe vaccines and other tools to prevent the spread of illness, like masks, are harmful. That belief is at odds with the overwhelming consensus of scientists and health experts, including Kennedy's own Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC.Both tensions are at play in Idaho. In April, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which prohibits state and local governments, private businesses, employers, schools and day cares to require anyone to take a vaccine. (Otto Kitsinger for ProPublica) As is the case nationally, Idaho's health freedom" movement has long pushed back against being labeled anti-vaccine." Idaho lawmakers and advocates have stressed that their goals are bodily autonomy and informed choice.They do not take a stance on the bodily autonomy principle when it comes to abortion, however. Almost all state legislators who voted for the Idaho Medical Freedom Act also voted to ban abortion, if they were in office at both times.Every action has to be evaluated on its individual morality," not on whether it does the most good for the most people, Manookian said.But Manookian's rejection of vaccine mandates goes beyond a libertarian philosophy.Manookian has said publicly that she thinks vaccines are poison for profit," that continuing to let day cares require vaccination would put our children on the chopping block," that measles is positive for the body," that the virus protects against cancer, and that it can send people into total remission" - an assertion she made on an Idaho wellness center's podcast in April.Manookian told ProPublica she believes infectious diseases have been made the bogeyman."Against those claims, research has shown that having the measles suppresses immunity to other diseases, a phenomenon dubbed immune amnesia" that can make children who have recovered from measles more susceptible to pneumonia and other bacterial and viral infections. About 20% of unvaccinated people who get measles will be hospitalized, and 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who are infected will die from complications of the disease, according to the CDC.And while researchers have studied using engineered measles viruses in a cancer treatment, those same researchers have written that they were dismayed to learn" their research has been misconstrued by some who oppose vaccination. They said they very strongly advise" giving children the measles vaccine, that there is no evidence that measles infection can protect against cancer" and that measles is a dangerous pathogen, not suitable for use as a cancer therapy."(Manookian said she believes she has evidence for her cancer remission claim but couldn't readily produce it, adding that she may have been mistaken.)The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, meanwhile, is safe and highly effective, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others. The CDC says the most common negative reactions are a sore arm, fever or mild rash. Two doses of the vaccine provide near total protection, according to the CDC.Manookian said she doesn't believe the research on vaccines has been adequate.She will have another chance to spread her views from a prominent platform in November, when she's scheduled to speak at the Children's Health Defense 2025 conference in Austin, Texas.She'll share the stage with celebrities in the anti-vaccine movement: Del Bigtree, communications director for Kennedy's past presidential campaign; actor Russell Brand; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson; and Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general who made headlines for his push to end vaccine mandates in Florida, months after Idaho wrote that concept into law.