ICE accused of misleading tiny school district's police chief as secret deal emerges

A small Oklahoma public school district with its own police force became the first school in the nation to have an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the agency’s records.

But just as quickly, the agreement disappeared from ICE’s website, and school officials deny entering into it.

Known as a 287(g) agreement, records show the Caney Valley Public Schools Police Department in Washington County was listed as of March 16, but the notice was taken down days later.

District Superintendent Steven Cantrell said his school’s police chief was misled by ICE during a recent training event, during which he asked for more information but was instead sent a 287(g) agreement and asked to sign it. Cantrell said only he could sign the document, and only after it is approved by the school board.

“He requested official information but did not sign anything,” Cantrell said. “I think there was a lot of misrepresentation.”

Ward 1 School Board member Clayton Ullrich said he was not informed that Caney Valley schools entered into an agreement with ICE. He said the board did not vote on entering any such agreement.

“ No, no, no, no,” Ullrich said. “I haven't heard anything on that.”

Caney Valley Public Schools Police Department was established just six months ago, in September 2025, listing Michael Coates as the chief.

"We are not participating in a 287(g) agreement, and our department is NOT involved in immigration enforcement," Coates said in an email. "We did review training opportunities related to the program; however, we ultimately determined it does not align with our department’s mission and provides no value to our operations. We are committed to school safety. The agreement appears to be more suited for agencies that operate jails or are directly involved in immigration enforcement practices."

Cantrell said the training event attended by Coates was to train officers to prevent sexual assault. There, Coates was contacted by ICE about training, Cantrell said. Cantrell said Coates had recently been confronted with adults on the campus after normal hours who did not have identification and could not speak English. He said Coates wanted more information on what to do in such a situation.

But Cantrell said the school is not entering into any agreement with ICE.

“There's never going to be a time where we're going to go into a contract with ICE or any other government agency, other than something educational,” Cantrell said. “ The last thing that I want is for my parents to think that we're going to be opening our doors to ICE and submitting information to them, or anything else.”

The 287(g) agreement under which the Caney school district was listed by ICE is the Task Force Model, a broad, aggressive program that deputizes local law enforcement to ICE. Under it, certified officers are authorized to make warrantless immigration arrests, interrogate individuals, prepare charges, detain, and transport people to ICE facilities. The model is plagued with controversy and accusations of racial profiling, as reported in previous Oklahoma Watch stories.

Gabriela Ramirez-Perez, Immigration Policy Analyst with the Oklahoma Policy Institute, said the task force model erodes public trust in law enforcement and would be especially damaging in a school system.

“ Local law enforcement agencies are cooperating in federal immigration enforcement efforts,” she said. “A study that looked specifically at immigrant trust in law enforcement found that undocumented immigrants were 61% less likely to report crimes they witnessed if they knew local law enforcement worked with ICE. It undermines public safety for everyone.”
The ICE agreement, no longer available on the federal agency’s website, was first presented by concerned immigration activists Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University, and Andrew Thrasher, an activist concerned about the justice system’s treatment of immigrants. Thrasher provided ICE’s spreadsheet to Oklahoma Watch.

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.