Gov. Kelly Ayotte is applauding the application by New Hampshire State Police to take on immigration enforcement duties for the Trump administration. We fear that this will not be a one-act play and that it will end in tragedy.

The state police are volunteering to partner with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency under a section of federal law, 287(g), that would allow troopers to question, detain and arrest people based on their immigration status.

“It is critical for state and local law enforcement to cooperate with federal authorities and protect our citizens,” Ayotte said. “Criminals who are in our country illegally and pose a danger should be apprehended and removed.”

True enough, but we know of nothing that now prevents state troopers from apprehending dangerous criminals, whether they be undocumented immigrants or, more likely, U.S. citizens. Instead, it appears that what the state police — and some local police agencies, including the Grafton County Sheriff’s Department — propose to do is help enforce immigration laws, a responsibility of the federal government. Violation of these laws is regarded as a civil — not a criminal — offense, punishable not by jail but by expulsion from the United States. The public has been told repeatedly over many years that the state police lack sufficient resources to perform their current duties, so why do they want to take on additional ones that do not pertain to crime?

Rather than enhancing the safety of New Hampshire residents, this change presents a clear and present danger to it. The most obvious one is that if immigrant communities fear the police, as they surely will if they perceive officers to be simply another arm of ICE, they will naturally fear to report crime or to cooperate with authorities in the prosecution of it. This would affect not only immigrant enclaves but broader communities.

A number of local police departments have recognized this reality and have gone the extra mile to build strong relationships with immigrants within their borders. All this effort will be undermined if the state’s pre–eminent law enforcement agency becomes an immigration enforcement agency as well. It is a lot to expect immigrants to distinguish among police agencies they come into contact with.

As Christine Wellington of the New Hampshire Immigration Rights Network puts it, participating in the 287(g) program “shifts law enforcement interactions away from community policing. It feeds into spurious stereotypes that depict noncitizens as dangerous and criminal. It will fundamentally change the dynamics of police interactions with people within immigrant communities, including those who are lawfully present and including U.S. citizens. People will be afraid to come forward to report crimes and interact with police in community settings. Police departments that are not engaging in 287(g) enforcement will also suffer the negative consequences of this program as overall fear of police interactions rises.”

There is another threat lurking in the extension of the long arm of ICE, which the Trump administration is employing to crack down on legitimate dissent. Investigators from the agency were instrumental in the arrest recently of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old lawful permanent resident who is married to an American citizen. He has not been charged with any crime, according to The New York Times, but the government is invoking an obscure provision of federal law to characterize his participation during protests at Columbia University as harmful to U.S. foreign policy by fomenting antisemitism. Ominously, Trump has vowed that Khalil’s case is the first of many to come.

Despite this being a clear violation of the First Amendment, we take the president at his word. This is not a slippery slope, but the edge of a precipice descending to right-wing authoritarianism. It is not difficult to imagine ICE deputizing its state law enforcement partners — or enablers — to extend this crackdown to the Dartmouth, Colby-Sawyer or University System of New Hampshire campuses and to dissenters more generally. We would be surprised, and disappointed, if residents of the “Live Free or Die” state wanted to live under the heel of that jackboot.