The 9 Cooperation Standards

State and local resources — officer time, vehicles, buildings, personnel, equipment, communications infrastructure — should never subsidize federal civil enforcement goals. If the federal government wants to use state assets, it must treat the state like an independent contractor: pay in full, with voluntary consent, in advance. States are not an unpaid arm of federal administration.

Formal agreements that deputize state or local officers as federal civil enforcement agents — including 287(g) agreements — transfer state authority to federal direction in ways that undermine state sovereignty and due-process safeguards. A state that has not affirmatively authorized such agreements by statute cannot legitimately enter them. Policy should not be made through administrative MOUs that bypass the legislature.

Certain institutions are the load-bearing structures of a functioning civil society: schools, hospitals, courthouses, childcare facilities, places of worship, and workplaces. When enforcement activity reaches into these spaces, it does not simply affect the individuals targeted — it chills participation for everyone. A parent who fears the school pickup line stops sending their child. A patient who fears the emergency room avoids care. Society breaks down at the edges of its own institutions.

When private corporations run detention facilities on behalf of the federal government, accountability collapses. The federal agency points to the contractor; the contractor points to the contract; the detained person has no clear path to remedy. States can refuse to be the geography where this arrangement operates. Barring private contractors from running immigration detention within state borders is a straightforward exercise of state regulatory authority over facilities located on state soil.

When residents give their information to a state agency — the DMV, the Board of Elections, the department of health, a licensing board, a public school — that data is held in trust. The state collected it for a specific purpose. Using it for unrelated federal enforcement is a betrayal of that trust. Firewalling state databases from federal extraction is not obstruction — it is keeping a promise to every resident who filled out a form.

An administrative detainer is a request issued by the same agency conducting the enforcement — no judge, no independent review, no probable cause determination by anyone outside the agency. Treating that request as a command is not due process. It is a rubber stamp. A judicial warrant, signed by an Article III judge on a showing of probable cause, is the standard the law requires. States that participate in enforcement without that warrant are not upholding the law — they are helping circumvent it.

Laws without reporting requirements are suggestions. When there is no public record of how many federal requests a state received, how many it honored, on what legal basis, and through which agencies — there is no meaningful accountability. Statutory annual public reporting forces cooperation activity into the open, where legislators, journalists, and residents can evaluate it. Transparency is not an optional add-on. It is the enforcement mechanism for every other standard.

Statutes without enforcement mechanisms are political statements, not law. When the only enforcer is the government, enforcement depends on political will, budget priorities, and who is in office this cycle. A private right of action creates a distributed, self-funding accountability system that works regardless of who holds power. AG enforcement authority provides an institutional backstop. Together, they make the other eight standards real.

Anonymous enforcement is the enemy of accountability. When agents do not display visible identification, wear face coverings, or deny residents the right to record lawful activity in public, there is no way to establish who did what, to whom, or whether it was lawful. Identification and recording requirements are not obstacles to enforcement — they are the conditions under which enforcement can be trusted. States can require these standards of their own personnel and make them a condition of any state cooperation.