By GISELA SALOMON and REBECCA SANTANA

As part of the Trump administration’s push to carry out mass deportations, the agency responsible for immigration enforcement has aggressively revived and expanded a decades-old program that delegates immigration enforcement powers to state and local law enforcement agencies.

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Under the 287(g) program led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police officers can interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has rapidly expanded the number of signed agreements it has with law enforcement agencies across the country.

The reason is clear. Those agreements vastly beef up the number of immigration enforcement staff available to ICE, which has about 6,000 deportation officers, as they aim to meet Trump’s goal of deporting as many of the roughly 11 million people in the country illegally as they can.

Here’s a look at what these agreements are and what critics say about them:

What is a 287(g) agreement and what’s the benefit to ICE?

These agreements are signed between a law enforcement agency and ICE and allow the law enforcement agency to perform certain types of immigration enforcement actions.

There are three different types of agreements.

—Under the “jail services model,” law enforcement officers can screen people detained in jails for immigration violations.

—The “warrant service officer” model authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to comply with ICE warrants or requests on immigrants while they are at their agency’s jails.

—The “task force model” gives local officers the ability to investigate someone’s immigration status during their routine police duties.

These agreements were authorized by a 1996 law, but it wasn’t until 2002 that the federal government actually signed one of these agreements with a local agency. The first agreement was with Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement.

“The benefit to ICE is that it expands the ability to enforce immigration law across multiple jurisdictions,” said John Torres, who served as acting director of ICE from 2008 to 2009.

Earlier in his career, he said, he was assigned to the Los Angeles jail and would interview any foreign citizen who came through the jail to see if they were in the country illegally. But if a jail has a 287(g) agreement with ICE it frees up those agents at the jail to do something else.

What’s going on with these agreements under the Trump administration?

The number of signed agreements has ballooned under Trump in a matter of months.

In December of last year, ICE had 135 agreements with law enforcement agencies across 21 states. By May 19, ICE had signed 588 agreements with local and state agencies across 40 states, with an additional 83 agencies pending approval.

Roughly half of the pacts are in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced the arrest of more than 1,100 immigrants in an orchestrated sweep between local and federal officials.

Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has also allied himself with Trump on immigration, comes in second. Other states topping the list are Georgia and North Carolina.

A majority of the agreements are with sheriff’s departments, a reflection of the fact that they are largely responsible for running jails in America.

But other agencies have also signed the agreements including the Florida and Texas National Guard, the Florida Department of Lottery Services and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The expansion of agreements “has been unprecedented in terms of the speed and the breath,” said Amien Kacou, attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida.

“ICE under the Trump administration has made a push in every state essentially to have them cooperate,” Kacou said.

So what are the concerns?

Immigrants, and their attorneys and advocates say these agreements can lead to racial profiling and there’s not enough oversight.

“If you are an immigrant, or if you sound like an immigrant or you look like an immigrant, you are likely to be detained here in Florida,” said Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, executive director at Hope Community Center in Apopka, central Florida.

These concerns are especially acute over the task force model since those models allow law enforcement officers to carry out immigration enforcement actions as part of their daily law enforcement work.

Lena Graber, a senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center which advocates for immigrants, said that the Obama administration phased out the task force model in 2012 after concerns that law enforcement organizations authorized under it were racially profiling people when making arrests.

The first Trump administration considered bringing back that model but ultimately did not, she said. Graber said using this model, the local law enforcement have most of the powers of ICE agents.

“They’re functionally ICE agents,” she said.

Rights groups say that in areas where 287(g) agreements are in place, people in the country illegally are less likely to reach out to law enforcement authorities when they’re victims of or witness to a crime for fear that authorities will turn around and arrest them instead.

“This is finding methods to terrorize communities,” said Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South. “They create immigration enforcement and local law enforcement which they are not trained or able to do in any sort of just manner.”

Federal authorities and local law enforcement agencies deny those critics and maintain that officers follow the laws when detaining people.

“There is no racial profiling,” said Miami Border Patrol chief agent Jeffrey Dinise at a recent press conference along with Florida and ICE officials. He explained that officers may stop cars after traffic violations. They run the tag plates through immigration systems and can see the legal status of the person, he said.

Torres also said that local law enforcement officers operating under 287(g) agreements aren’t “out on an island by themselves.” There’s a lot of coordination with ICE agents and the local law enforcement officers.

“They’re not asking them to operate independently on their own,” Torres said.

How does law enforcement join?

Law enforcement agencies nominate officers to participate in the 287(g) program. They have to be U.S. citizens and pass a background check.

On its website, ICE has created templates of the forms that law enforcement agencies interested in joining the program can use.

The training varies. According to ICE’s website, officers in the “task force model” must complete a 40-hour online course that covers such topics as immigration law, civil rights and liability issues. As of mid-March about 625 officers had been trained under that model, the website said, although that number is likely much higher now as law enforcement agencies are signing up regularly.

For the “jail enforcement model,” there’s a four week training as well as a refresher course. The Warrant Service Officer model requires eight hours of training.

Austin Kocher, a researcher at Syracuse University in New York who focuses on immigration affairs, said that training has always been a challenge for the 287(g) program. It’s expensive and often a strain on small departments to send them to a training center, so the training has gotten progressively shorter, he said.

By Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal

LAS VEGAS — “We’re all ‘Star Wars’ nuts,” Barry Ray says as his wife, Melissa, and daughter Evie play nearby.

Evie knows all the “Star Wars” characters from multiple readings of the Little Golden Books series. She’s wearing a Princess Leia costume so, in keeping with the canon, her parents are dressed as Darth Vader and Padmé Amidala.

They’ve traveled from Granbury, Texas, to celebrate Evie’s 6th birthday in the middle of a 100-acre dry lake bed that’s the next best thing to Tatooine. The previous night, they’d watched the 1977 original, “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” inside a two-bedroom cave.

“We’ve had a great time,” Barry says, “and it’s an experience she won’t ever forget.”

“It” is OutpostX, a swath of raw desert flush with science-fiction iconography that founder Travis Chambers refers to as “a film-set hotel with a story.”

The whole thing feels like it’s part of a different galaxy, even though it’s not all that far, far away.

A ‘postapocalyptic sanctuary’

During a 2013 visit to a pirate-themed Airbnb in Southern California, something clicked inside Chambers. He started traveling the world, racking up 30-something countries in short order.

“I got to the point where I’d rather stay in a shack in the jungle in Belize than go to a Four Seasons,” Chambers says. “Luxury just does not do it for me.”

That same year, he founded the digital ad agency Chamber Media, which would land him on a Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Ultimately, he says, the company was a means to an end. In 2021, Chambers cashed out with a reported $17 million to fund his real dream.

OutpostX is a whole lot of nothing, and that’s by design. Imagined as a “postapocalyptic sanctuary,” the retreat covers 240 acres yet feels significantly larger given the lack of visible borders. You can see for miles there without recognizing anything other than mountains and scrub.

Chambers identifies luxury, service and location as the three elements on which most hotels compete. “We didn’t follow any of those,” he boasts.

There’s no gift shop, no restaurant, not even a vending machine. You could complete your stay at OutpostX without interacting with another soul.

The accommodations consist of three cave dwellings, four Zen Domes and a handful of tents. Whether you purchase the ingredients from OutpostX or bring your own food, you’ll be cooking for yourself — either in your kitchenette or the fire pit in the common area.

Instead of a staff to pamper guests, there are hot tubs, a cold plunge and a sauna with a wood-burning stove. A solitary hammock offers its occupant a silence most will never know.

In keeping with Chambers’ tastes, OutpostX is aggressively anti-luxury, and guests are more than happy to pay for that vibe. Zen Domes start at $320 a night, the one-bedroom caves at $390 and the two-bedroom cave at $475. Ahead of its opening in 2023, the retreat was sold out for its first year.

“We’ve gotten comments on the internet, ‘You want us to pay to stay in a Third World country?’ ” Chambers says. “And we’re like, ‘Yep. Exactly. A Third World country 2,000 years from now.’ ”

A mythology of its own

Not only is OutpostX reminiscent of the Skywalkers’ home planet, guests can explore its outer reaches from inside sand cruisers, custom-built vehicles that greatly resemble Luke’s banged-up landspeeder — minus the hovering.

Just don’t expect anyone involved in the enterprise to mention the words “Star Wars.” (It’s a bit like the episode of “The Simpsons” in which the family hires a singing British nanny named Shary Bobbins who insists she’s “an original creation, like Ricky Rouse and Monald Muck.”)

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Instead, the retreat comes with its own backstory involving brothers Maa and Naa Hyer, who were separated at birth to avoid being recruited into the galactic military. What you experience at OutpostX is the settlement as it’s being rebuilt after The Empire destroyed it with a solar flare.

That story plays out in the multi-episode podcast that’s sent to guests so they’ll have something to listen to during the 180-mile drive from Las Vegas or the 100-mile trip from Zion National Park.

Signs around OutpostX tell more of the tale, the way a state park might showcase its flora and fauna. The caves, they inform the guests who notice them, were built with materials hauled out of far-off granite quarries by giant Armaados, while the Zen Domes were constructed from the blast glass salvaged from a crashed ship.

Guests typically break down into thirds, Chambers says. There’s the “sci-fi geeks and nerds” who’ll take to the origin tale and rent the corresponding costumes; those looking for seclusion; and the Burning Man/hippie crowd. The communal Kaan Lounge offers Frank Herbert’s “Dune” books for the former. For the latter, it also houses a guitar, drums, a sonic energy handpan and a “Sound Bowl Experience.”

More is on the way

“Every very smart person told us that it was a horrible idea,” Chambers says.

They’ve started coming around, though. OutpostX is 90% booked six months in advance. Similar locations are planned to open in Moab and Puerto Rico this year.

By then, potential guests may have figured out whether the minimalist concept is right for them.

“I’ve seen people show up in a Maybach or a Bentley and get out,” Chambers says, “then get in their car and leave.”

The OutpostX clientele, he adds, isn’t so much a demographic as it is a personality: someone who’s creative and imaginative — and willing to pay a premium to exercise those attributes.

“I think when everyone is at OutpostX,” Chambers says, “they’re experiencing what you would build with your friends if you were 14 years old.”

©2025 Las Vegas Review-Journal. Visit reviewjournal.com.. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT.

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OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.

OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been “quietly” collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom.

Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple’s chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019 to start his own design firm.

In a joint letter posted on OpenAI’s website Wednesday, Ive and Altman said it “became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company.”

That’s when Ive co-founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.

OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and his design collective, LoveFrom, will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.” Both OpenAI and Ive’s design firm are based in San Francisco.

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

The popular video game Fortnite has returned to the iPhone app store in the U.S., ending a prolonged exile that was triggered by a legal showdown over the lucrative fees that Apple had been collecting for years through a payment system that it has been forced to change.

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Fortnite hailed its app’s long-awaited restoration to the iPhone and iPad in a Tuesday post, marking the first time it will be available on those devices since it was ousted in 2020 for trying to avoid the 15% to 30% commissions that Apple collects on in-app transactions.

The video game featuring a virtual fight on a digital island is coming back to the iPhone just a few days after its parent company, Epic Games, filed a motion asking a federal judge to order its return as part of a civil contempt of court finding issued against Apple late last month.

In a brief statement filed in court late Tuesday, Apple said the dispute that had been keeping Fortnite off its iOS software for the iPhone had been resolved. The Cupertino, California, company didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The legal wrangling is all part of a bitter feud that is still boiling.

Epic filed a lawsuit alleging Apple had turned its app store into an illegal monopoly — a claim that it lost under a 2021 ruling made by a federal judge after a month-long trial.

Although she decided Apple wasn’t breaking antitrust laws, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the company to loosen control over in-app payments and allow links to other options that might offer lower prices.

After exhausting an appeal that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Apple last year introduced a new system that opened the door for links to alternative payment options while still imposing a 27% commission on in-app transactions executed outside its own system.

Epic fired back by alleging Apple was thumbing its nose at the legal system, reviving another round of court hearings that lasted nearly a year before Gonzalez Rogers delivered her stinging rebuke that included a ban on collecting any kind of commission on alternative payment options.

That appeared to clear the way for Fortnite’s return to the iPhone and iPad, but Epic last week said the video game was still being blocked by Apple. After Apple contended that keeping Fortnite was still permissible while it pursues an appeal of Gonzalez Rogers’ contempt ruling, Epic forced the issue by asking the judge for another order that would make clear the video game should be allowed back on the iPhone and iPad.

Gonzalez Rogers on Monday asked why Apple was still blocking Fortnite without an order from the appeals court authorizing that action. She scheduled a May 27 hearing in Oakland, California, to hear Epic’s latest motion while noting “Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing.”