ROGERS, Arkansas — Northwest Arkansas has become a hot spot in the federal immigration crackdown because of one county's partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and aggressive traffic stops by police, the Associated Press reported after reviewing ICE arrest data, law enforcement records and interviews with local residents. Fox News, summarising the same AP reporting, described the Benton County Jail as one of America's busiest ICE hubs.
Source: Associated Press (via Dayton Daily News), Oct. 2026
More than 450 people were arrested by ICE at the Benton County Jail from January 1 through October 15, according to ICE arrest data from the University of California, Berkeley Deportation Data Project analysed by AP — more than 1.5 arrests per day in a county of roughly 300,000 people. Most of the arrests were made through the county's 287(g) agreement, named for a section of immigration law, which allows deputies to question people booked into the jail about their immigration status. The county's programme accounted for more than 4% of roughly 7,000 arrests nationwide attributed to similar programmes during the first nine and a half months of the year, according to the data.
Source: Associated Press (via Dayton Daily News), Oct. 2026
Under the programme, deputies alert ICE to inmates suspected of being in the country unlawfully. They are usually held without bond and eventually transferred into ICE custody — typically moved to the neighbouring Washington County Detention Center in Fayetteville and then taken to detention centres in Louisiana for potential deportation, AP reported. About half of those arrested through the programme in Benton County had been convicted of crimes, while the other half had charges pending, according to the data; recent ICE holds included people arrested on forgery, sexual assault, drug trafficking, theft and public intoxication charges, with domestic-violence-related and unsafe-driving offences among the most common. AP also noted that charges are often dropped before defendants are convicted or sentenced, so that they can face deportation proceedings instead.
Source: Associated Press (via Dayton Daily News), Oct. 2026
Nationwide, ICE now has more than 1,180 cooperation agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, up from 135 at the start of the current administration, and has offered payments to cover training, equipment and salaries in some circumstances, AP reported. Earlier this year Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law requiring county sheriffs to cooperate with ICE through either a 287(g) jail programme or a warrant-service programme. Residents born in other countries told AP they were afraid to drive in northwest Arkansas regardless of legal status, with some leaving home only for work; AP's account included a woman born in Mexico who has lived in the U.S. since she was three months old and who was held for four days after a traffic citation and a missed-court warrant led to an ICE hold at the Benton County Jail, before being released without explanation.