Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller is doubling down on his decision to help federal immigration officials find and arrest people in the country without authorization — and he might end up in court for it.

Earlier this week, the Pinal County Board of Supervisors released a legal opinion that found Miller’s partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be unlawful because the board didn’t approve it, and ordered him to stop operating under it by Jan. 28. Just days later, Miller’s office released a statement announcing that he has no intention of ending his office’s involvement in enforcing federal immigration law.

“The County Attorney’s Office rejects that conclusion and maintains a press statement does not terminate a federal agreement,” reads the statement. “Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller reiterates that the 287(g) agreement will continue. ICE has also confirmed it remains in effect.”

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In August, Miller signed onto a 287(g) task force model agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. The model gives the county attorney office’s 10 investigators — who are responsible for building legal cases for crimes committed locally — the ability to interrogate people about their citizenship status during routine interactions and arrest those suspected of being in the country without authorization. Critics say that could lead to victims and witnesses of crimes, who investigators often interview, becoming more unwilling to come forward.

During a news conference touting the agreement in December, Miller told reporters his office wouldn’t “willy-nilly arrest folks,” but the agreement expressly allows officers to arrest a person without a warrant if the officer believes the person’s presence in the country violates federal law.

James Daniels, the board’s spokesman, told the Arizona Mirror that the supervisors expect Miller to discontinue acting under the expanded authority the agreement awards his office by the end of the month, otherwise the board will be forced to consider next steps.

“The Board of Supervisors has made their position clear, the County Attorney has been asked to refrain from acting under the 287(g) agreement and set forth the actions he will take to terminate the agreement no later than January 28, 2026,” Daniels said, in an emailed statement. “Should he not comply by the deadline, further legal options will be discussed.”

In the board’s legal opinion made public this week, attorney Brett Johnson, who was hired to investigate the legality of Miller’s decision, wrote that because the agreement wasn’t considered and approved by county supervisors, it is effectively void. Johnson pointed out that Arizona law reserves the power to enter into intergovernmental agreements to a county’s governing body and that federal law itself says 287(g) agreements must be between DHS and a state or a state’s “political subdivision.”

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“Under state law, Pinal County is a ‘political subdivision’ and the County Attorney, in contrast, is an ‘officer’ of a political subdivision,” Johnson wrote.

Most 287(g) agreements are entered into by local law enforcement agencies. In Arizona, sheriffs offices in Yuma, Navajo, La Paz, Cochise, Pinal and Yavapai counties, the Mesa Police Department and the Arizona Department of Corrections are part of the program. But only the Pinal County Attorney’s Office has signed onto the task force version of the partnership, which is vastly more aggressive than its jail enforcement and warrant officer counterparts.

The latter two are limited to enforcement actions within jails and against people who have already been arrested, and generally only give officers the ability to use federal databases to investigate a person’s citizenship status or hold people suspected to be in the country without authorization for 48 hours beyond their scheduled release time to allow ICE agents to take custody. The task force model, which is the only version that allows officers to make arrests based on a suspected lack of legal status, was discontinued in 2012, following racial profiling concerns. The Trump administration revived it last year.

Along with the legal conflicts Johnson included in the letter to the board, he warned supervisors that the nature of the task force model is likely to ensnare the county in civil rights lawsuits. He added that because the county attorney’s office is responsible for prosecuting crimes, allowing investigators to make arrests threatens to “eviscerate prosecutorial immunity.”

Unlike the county attorney’s agreement, the partnership between ICE and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is limited to enforcement actions within the county jail and it earned the approval from county leaders more than a decade ago. It was first adopted and signed by the sheriff, county manager and board clerk in 2008 and, at the same hearing that saw supervisors rebuke Miller’s partnership, it was updated and renewed by the board.