The Caney Valley Public Schools Police Department in Ramona – almost 30 miles north of Tulsa – launched last fall with two officers to help secure the district's campus sites and connected roads.
During a training on how to approach sexual assault investigations earlier this month, the district Police Chief Michael Coates mistakenly signed an agreement deputizing them with federal immigration enforcement authority through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to the district superintendent Steven Cantrell.
"So they submitted the information to sign up for additional training," Cantrell said during a phone interview. "And then he got a notification that he had agreed to participate, and he's like, 'No, I didn't.'"
Coates said he pulled the police department out of what's known as a 287(g) Task Force Enforcement Model agreement with ICE days later. It's a federal-local partnership revitalized in recent years by President Trump's efforts to broaden the immigration detention dragnet in line with his mass deportation policies.
Had the district entered the agreement intentionally – and legitimately – it would have been the first school district in the nation to enter such a partnership with ICE.
"To clarify, our department's initial interest in the 287(g) agreement was centered on the training component," Coates said. "After further discussion and review, we determined that the agreement is not a good fit for our department."
The prospect of free training is an effective lure for small-town police departments in Oklahoma to contract with ICE to train their small teams. There are 40 active partnerships between law enforcement agencies and ICE as of March 23, five of which were entered this month.
Coates wrote in an email that the agreements with ICE are a better match for law enforcement agencies that run their own detention centers, which his school district's department doesn't.
"As a campus police agency, we do not operate a detention facility and are not engaged in patrol operations related to immigration enforcement," Coates wrote. " Therefore, the broader scope and purpose of the agreement do not align with our mission or daily responsibilities."
Superintendent Cantrell said the district never entered into the agreement because he's the only one with the authority to sign binding contracts on the district's behalf.
Still, the mix-up briefly placed his school district on the list of contracted law enforcement agencies ICE keeps online, causing a stir among advocates and researchers, all without the district's school board knowing.
Cantrell said there has been no communication between his district and ICE, other than the notification that they'd somehow signed up for the Task Force agreement. And that his district police will not be enforcing immigration at any capacity.
"Our mission statement, the very first sentence, says that we're going to provide a safe and positive learning environment for all of our kids," Cantrell said. "So I don't care if they're Hispanic, African American, Native American, they're going to get the same support that we can give anybody."
