Research Note Researched

TX — statewide 287(g) agreements (AG/DPS/National Guard) are misattributed to individual counties, not county-specific deals

Overview

La Salle County’s heat-score carries a 287g:8 signal that includes the Texas Attorney General’s Office, Texas DPS Criminal Investigations, Texas National Guard, and small-town PDs (Marlin PD, Nixon PD) as if these were La Salle County-specific 287(g) partners. Research confirms these are statewide or multi-jurisdictional Texas agreements, not agreements specific to La Salle County — the heat-score ingestion is very likely attributing statewide-scope agreements to every county in the dataset rather than only to counties with a genuine standalone local agreement. This is a data-quality/methodology finding, not a new La Salle County signal.

Key Details

TX Attorney General 287(g) agreement: signed January 2025 — an unprecedented statewide-scope agreement between ICE and the Texas AG’s office, per Texas Immigration Law Council (TXILC) analysis. Not county-specific.
Texas DPS Task Force 287(g): Texas DPS troopers statewide have been deputized under the Task Force model (“Texas Turns Its Sprawling State Police Force Into Immigration Agents,” Texas Observer) — a state-level rollout, not a La Salle County sheriff action.
Senate Bill 8 (effective Jan 1, 2026): requires nearly every Texas county operating a jail to enter a 287(g) agreement (Warrant Service Officer, Jail Enforcement, or Task Force model) by end of 2026 or face fines. This is why the signal count is high statewide — it’s a legal mandate hitting ~200+ counties simultaneously, not evidence of unusual La Salle County-specific enforcement intensity.
La Salle County Sheriff’s Office (Sheriff Hector C. Ramirez): no confirmed, dated reporting found of a La Salle County-specific 287(g) agreement signature, model selection, or commissioners court vote in this research pass. County has until end of 2026 to comply under SB8 like all others.
Marlin PD / Nixon PD: these are small municipal police departments in Falls County and Gonzales/Wilson County respectively — geographically unrelated to La Salle County. Their presence in the La Salle County signal bundle strongly suggests a name-matching or geocoding error in the ingestion pipeline rather than a real La Salle County connection.

Why It Matters

If the county_heat_score.py ingestion is folding statewide/multi-county-agency 287(g) records into every county’s local signal count, La Salle County’s true “8” signal count for 287(g) is likely inflated by state-level noise — the same distortion likely affects most or all of the ~200 Texas counties post-SB8. This is worth flagging to whoever maintains kb/scripts/county_heat_score.py for a scope check (agency jurisdiction vs. county FIPS) before treating 287g counts as county-level differentiators across Texas.

Sources

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