The New Hampshire State Police have signed onto a growing list of law enforcement agencies nation-wide joining an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program, empowering them to work under the agency as immigration enforcement officers.

The ICE 287(g) program allows for three types of participants: the jail service model, intended to identify and process illegal immigrants already in law enforcement custody; the warrant service officer, which allows ICE to train local law enforcement to execute administrative warrants on illegal immigrants in jail; and the task force model.

The task force model “serves as a force multiplier for law enforcement agencies to enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight during their routine police duties.”

The NH State Police, along with the local Gorham, New Hampshire Police Department, applied to work with ICE under the task force model, empowering them to enforce immigration law. The Gorham Police Department has already been accepted into the program, and the state police application remains pending.

The application comes as NH’s Republican-controlled legislature is working to crack down on illegal immigration.

Last month, the NH House passed three bills to combat illegal immigration: one to ban sanctuary city policies that shelter illegals from ICE, one to officially allow local law enforcement to work with ICE, and one to reject any driver’s licenses issued by other states, such as Massachusetts, to illegal immigrants.

Currently, the NH agencies are the only New England-based ones that have either been accepted into or applied for the program under the task force model. Only one other New England entity, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, is involved with the program at all, participating under the jail service model.

No Maine agencies are involved in the program, and none appear on a list of pending applicants.