Two more Pennsylvania police departments have signed on to do federal immigration work during their ordinary patrols. In Blair County, in the Altoona area of central Pennsylvania, the Logan Township Board of Supervisors approved a memorandum of understanding with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday, November 12, and the Duncansville Borough Police Department entered into a similar agreement roughly two months ago, according to reporting by the Altoona Mirror carried by WRTA radio in Altoona on Friday.
Source: Altoona Mirror via WRTA / Lightner Communications
Both partnerships operate under what ICE calls the “task force model” of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The provision, enacted in 1996, allows ICE to delegate specified immigration-enforcement functions to state and local officers who then work under federal oversight. It is the most street-level of the 287(g) models: unlike jail-based agreements, which apply to people already in custody, the task force model puts immigration authority into routine daily patrol work.
What the agreements let local officers do
Under the task force model, deputized local officers can question individuals about their immigration status, check federal databases, issue immigration detainers and make immigration-related arrests while carrying out regular duties such as traffic stops, according to the Mirror's reporting. Before exercising that authority, participating officers receive 40 hours of free online training from ICE.
The scale of the program nationally is large and still growing. According to ICE figures cited in the reporting, there are currently more than 2,000 task force model agreements active across 32 states and two U.S. territories.
Pennsylvania is already deep in the program
Blair County is not an outlier in Pennsylvania. Tracking built from ICE's own participating-agency lists counts 148 agencies in the program across the state — about 5 percent of Pennsylvania's local agencies, covering roughly 461,400 people. Logan Township, which surrounds much of the city of Altoona, and the borough of Duncansville, just south of the city, now join that list.
The two Blair County departments police corridors that matter to truckers as well as residents: Logan Township covers busy stretches around Altoona used by traffic moving between Interstate 99 and U.S. Route 22, two of central Pennsylvania's main freight and commuter routes.
The other side of the debate, in a congressional report released this week
The Blair County signings became public in the same week that a member of Congress from western Pennsylvania released data arguing that 287(g) agreements drive up detentions. Congressman Chris Deluzio's office reported on November 10 that there were 209 ICE detentions in his 17th Congressional District between January 1 and August 6, 2026, and that 112 of them — about 54 percent — were attributed to a 287(g) agreement. Beaver County, which has a countywide 287(g) agreement, accounted for 134 of the 209 detentions, and 92 of those came through the program.
Source: Office of Congressman Chris Deluzio / 90.5 WESA
Deluzio's report, built on federal records obtained by the Deportation Data Project through Freedom of Information Act requests, further states that 140 of the 209 people detained in his district had no criminal record or pending charges — a claim ICE and the report's critics dispute in the wider national debate, and one the congressman's office presents as its central criticism of the program. Deluzio has urged Pennsylvania agencies to avoid or rescind 287(g) agreements. The Pennsylvania State Police, notably, has no agreement with ICE.
For immigrant families — including Punjabi and other South Asian truckers who cross central Pennsylvania daily — a 287(g) task force agreement changes what an ordinary traffic stop can become: a local officer in a participating department may now also check immigration status and act on it under ICE supervision. Supporters of the agreements say they extend federal enforcement capacity and target people unlawfully in the country; critics say they blur local policing and immigration enforcement and can deter residents from reporting crime.
What happens next
Logan Township's agreement was approved by its supervisors on Thursday; officers must complete ICE's training before they can exercise the delegated authority, so the practical change on Blair County roads will follow certification rather than the vote itself. Duncansville's department, having signed about two months ago, is further along the same path. No vote details, dissenting statements or implementation dates for either department were included in the initial reporting, and neither department had published its own statement by Friday afternoon — details Awaaz Punjab will add as the townships release them.