Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has ramped up sharply across East Idaho this month, part of a broader national expansion of the agency’s enforcement operations.

And local law enforcement leaders are increasingly being asked how closely their agencies should work with ICE.

For the past several months, East Idaho has seen somewhat frequent reports and social media posts claiming ICE activity in the region — but many of those turned out to be cases of local law enforcement officers being mistaken for ICE agents.

This month’s confirmed ICE sightings in Idaho Falls and Teton County appear to mark the first time the controversial federal agency has conducted larger-scale operations in East Idaho.

Not much is known about the ICE activity in Idaho Falls. The Idaho Falls Police Department has confirmed that ICE conducted operations in the city this month, but further details haven’t been released.

In Teton County, Sheriff Clint Lemieux confirmed ICE conducted enforcement operations in the Driggs area on July 18.

A video posted to Facebook — since removed — showed a Teton County Sheriff’s Office vehicle alongside unmarked vehicles, one of which had a license plate identified as belonging to an ICE vehicle previously used in the Idaho Falls operations.

Immigration support groups, who asked not to be named to protect the people they assist, confirmed two people were detained on July 18 in the Driggs area. Lemieux said ICE typically gives the county advance notice before operating in the area. He confirmed ICE’s presence in Teton County but did not specify locations or targets.

ICE agents may have been involved in a separate multi-agency narcotics investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration on July 21 that resulted in arrests near Willow Creek in Victor. Lemieux said the operation — which also involved Homeland Security Investigations, the IRS and several East Idaho police departments — was connected to a broader investigation unfolding across the region.

It has not been confirmed whether ICE agents participated in the July 21 operation or detained anyone. Lemieux confirmed only that Homeland Security Investigations, the federal agency under which ICE operates, did take part.

Andrea Flores, a volunteer with the Driggs-based Hispanic Resource Center, said the organization has heard from frightened community members as news of ICE’s arrival spread in Teton County.

“Our hearts are with everyone in our community who is feeling afraid right now,” the Hispanic Resource Center said in a statement. “(The Hispanic Resource Center) sees you and we want you to know you are not alone.”

This month’s dramatic increase in East Idaho ICE activity mirrors a rapid expansion of ICE’s local law enforcement partnerships statewide.

According to the ACLU of Idaho, the number of 287(g) agreements — formal partnerships that allow local law enforcement to perform certain immigration enforcement duties — has more than quadrupled in Idaho during the second Trump administration.

As of this month, ICE’s own public data shows 11 Idaho law enforcement agencies have signed 287(g) agreements: the Idaho State Police, Post Falls Police Department and the sheriff’s offices of Kootenai, Owyhee, Washington, Caribou, Franklin, Bonneville, Bingham, Power and Gooding counties.

Several of those agencies are in East Idaho. The Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office holds a warrant service officer agreement with ICE, which allows Bonneville County sheriff’s deputies to serve and execute ICE warrants on individuals already in the county jail — but does not involve deputies conducting immigration enforcement in the community. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office holds a task force model agreement, giving its deputies limited immigration authority during normal duties or ICE-led operations. Caribou, Bingham and Power counties also hold warrant service officer agreements with ICE.

Nationally, ICE reports it has signed 2,179 memoranda of agreement for 287(g) programs with law enforcement agencies across 39 states and two U.S. territories as of this month, part of the Trump administration’s broader push to expand ICE’s enforcement partnerships.

That expansion has run alongside a separate, and now uncertain, push to grow ICE’s detention capacity. In March, the agency purchased a Salt Lake City warehouse for $145.4 million with plans to convert it into one of the nation’s largest immigration detention facilities, with capacity for up to 10,000 detainees.

Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County sued the federal government in June seeking to block the project, arguing federal officials bypassed required environmental review and cut out local officials from planning. By mid-June, multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, reported that federal officials were moving to abandon the project — either selling the warehouse or transferring it to another federal agency — as part of a broader pullback from detention center plans in several states under new Department of Homeland Security leadership.

ICE and DHS have not directly confirmed the cancellation of the Salt Lake City warehouse detention facility project.

The push to expand formal ICE partnerships hasn’t gone unchallenged within Idaho’s own law enforcement community. Bonneville County Sheriff Samuel Hulse, president of the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association, told a legislative committee in Boise last week that participation in 287(g) agreements should remain a voluntary local decision — not one mandated by the state.

“Participation in the ICE partnership programs is voluntary and should remain a decision of locally elected officials who are accountable to their communities they serve,” Hulse told the Idaho Legislature’s Committee on Federalism.

Hulse’s association opposed House Bill 659, legislation that would have required every local law enforcement agency in Idaho to sign a 287(g) agreement. The Idaho House passed the bill 41-27 in March, but the Senate never took it up and it died when the legislative session adjourned.

Hulse said Idaho sheriffs already cooperate with ICE informally — sharing jail booking information and allowing federal agents to interview people in custody — without needing a formal agreement, and that detention capacity and budget constraints are real reasons some Idaho law enforcement agencies may choose not to formalize a partnership with ICE.

No Idaho city police departments had signed agreements with ICE until this month. The Post Falls Police Department in North Idaho became the first city police department in Idaho to sign a 287(g) agreement in July, joining the Idaho State Police and the state’s county sheriff’s offices already in the program.

Post Falls signed on to the task force model, the same agreement type held by Idaho State Police and the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office. Unlike the warrant service officer agreements — which are limited to serving ICE warrants on people already in jail — the task force model allows officers to exercise limited immigration authority during their normal patrol duties and on ICE-led operations.

The Teton Valley News and Idaho Capital Sun contributed to this report.