The Louisiana Department Of Wildlife And Fisheries (LDWF), typically responsible in part for overseeing wildlife reserves and enforcing local hunting rules, has assisted United States immigration authorities with bringing at least six people into federal custody this year, according to documents WIRED obtained via a public record request.
According to the documents, LDWF signed a memorandum of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May, which gives the wildlife agency the authority to detain people suspected of immigration violations and to transfer them into ICE custody. Since then, at least six men entered ICE custody after coming into contact with or being detained by LDWF officers. None of the men were issued criminal charges at the time they came into contact with LDWF officers, the documents show. Two of the men were known by ICE to have been in the country legally at the time the agency took them into custody.
The documents also indicate that at least one “joint patrol” took place in a Louisiana wildlife management area in which LDWF agents were accompanied by officers with Customs and Border Protection and the US Coast Guard. The memorandum of agreement between ICE and LDWF makes no mention of CBP or the possibility of working with the agency as part of the agreement. However, the documents indicate that a relationship with CBP may have been facilitated through LDWF’s partnership with ICE.
LDWF partnered with ICE under the agency’s 287(g) program, named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that enables officers and employees at the state or local level to perform some of the functions of US immigration officers, such as investigating, apprehending, detaining, or transporting people suspected of violating immigration law.
As of December 3, exactly 1,205 agencies have partnered with ICE through the 287(g) program. (An additional eight agencies are currently pending approval from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.) Some 1,053 of these agreements were signed this year, meaning enrollment has increased by 693 percent compared to the end of 2024. The LDWF is one of just three state wildlife agencies—the others being the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources—that have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, according to public ICE records. All three agreements were signed this year.
The marked expansion of the 287(g) program this year has generated relatively little attention. However, the documents from the LDWF indicate that the state and local agencies enrolled are actively detaining people not guilty of any crimes, and facilitating their arrests and possible deportation.
CBP did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. The LDWF answered questions about one particular incident, but did not respond to WIRED’s complete request for comment. ICE spokesperson Angelina Vicknair—when given the men’s full names, the dates and locations they were detained, all known circumstances of their detainment, and all other identifying information included in the documents—said that the agency did not have enough information to determine if the men were in custody, released, or deported. She also said that the number of men WIRED asked about, seven, constituted “too large a query,” adding, “We’ll need you to narrow it down.”
Per a LDWF “After Action Report” obtained by WIRED, three men were taken into a federal custody after the agency conducted a joint patrol on August 11 with five US Coast Guard officers and an unknown number of CBP agents in Lake Borgne, which is in Louisiana’s sprawling Biloxi Marsh Complex. According to the report, the officers were looking for people allegedly violating state statues for seed oyster harvesting.
