EXCLUSIVE — Oklahoma is launching a pilot program to turn over illegal immigrants in prison to federal police to jump-start President-elect Donald Trump‘s mass deportation effort.
Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) shared with the Washington Examiner on Friday that he had a plan to expeditiously deport more than 500 convicted illegal immigrants in its prisons as soon as Trump takes office in January 2025.
“We want to be the first state that works with President Trump,” Stitt said in a phone call.
“Right now, we have over 500 people incarcerated in Oklahoma who have broken the law, who are criminals, and they also are illegal,” Stitt said. “We would love to get them out of the state of Oklahoma, out of the country.”
Exactly 526 criminal illegal immigrants are in Oklahoma prisons as of Friday. The state pays $36,000 to house them each day, according to the governor’s office.
Stitt wants to turn them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before their sentences are up.
“We’re going to turn them over immediately to get them out of here,” the governor said. “I don’t know how any Oklahoman would argue with me. I don’t think on this, and I don’t know how the American would think this is not very reasonable.”
However, the pilot program could upset crime victims who feel their perpetrators are not paying the price for their crimes with an early release.
Naida Henao, head of engagement for an organization that helps victims of crime recover, told the Washington Examiner on Friday that the impact of Oklahoma’s plan could cause uneasiness among survivors.
“It would vary a little bit from client to client, survivor to survivor because folks have different preferences,” said Henao, of the Network for Victim Recovery of DC. “However, what we have found, generally speaking, is that folks actually feel less safe when folks are deported.
“The reason for that is if someone is in prison in California, for example, I, as a survivor, know where they are,” Henao said. “I get information updates about any possibility of release, of parole, etc. I’m kept in the loop, essentially up to their location and any changes to those plans. If someone is deported, I don’t know where they are. They could be in the country they were deported to. They could be on their way back. They could have been back in the country. They could be in my neighborhood. No one knows, and no one can then update me.”
Oklahoma’s efforts coincide with Trump’s campaign promise to start widespread deportations, starting with those convicted of crimes and the roughly 1.3 million people who have been ordered deported and are still in the United States. Trump tapped former ICE leader Tom Homan as his administration’s “border czar” to kickstart the effort.
Oklahoma’s pilot program, dubbed Operation Guardian, will be headed up by Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton.
Tipton said he envisions working with local and state police across the state to transfer illegal immigrant criminals in custody to ICE and go after others within the state who have criminal histories.
“Oklahoma has found itself in circumstances that the current open border policy has flooded our state with a transnational criminal element that our citizens should not be exposed to,” Tipton wrote in a statement. “I am currently working with leadership of our law enforcement partners to fully develop our operational strategy to be prepared for implementation as soon as the new administration takes office.”
If successful, it could be duplicated in other states.
It is unclear if ICE has the detention space to hold the more than 500 prisoners while they go through deportation proceedings. Immigrants arrested within the U.S. by ICE typically are detained in custody while their cases are decided by federal immigration judges.
Prisoners would be deported to their countries of origin. Stitt did not mention whether there would be any effort to see immigrants finish out their sentences after removal, but the state-level cases would essentially be closed.
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The effort could reduce the amount of money needed to house illegal immigrants in prison by more than $1 million per month if all 526 inmates were handed over to ICE.
“We’re not asking for more ICE agents,” Stitt said. “We’re just saying, ‘When we catch criminal activity, we’re going to turn them, we’re going to turn them over to the feds,’ and we know a Trump administration is going to do the right thing and deport them.”
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