Maryland’s lawmakers and sheriffs weigh limits on ICE partnerships

Listen to this article

Maryland officials can’t control U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but they have some options for limiting the agency’s impact and protecting immigrants’ civil rights.

At the upcoming legislative session, which begins Jan. 14, the General Assembly will again consider ending what are known as 287(g) agreements, through which local law enforcement and detention agencies collaborate with ICE.

And if they choose to do so, Maryland’s Republican sheriffs expect ICE to retaliate.

On the final day of last year’s legislative session, a bill to end these agreements, sponsored by state Del. Nicole Williams, D-Prince George’s, was watered down and passed without its key provisions. The legislature did extend certain protections to immigrants in “sensitive locations” like churches and schools.

But in the past year, Marylanders have seen ICE accelerate its arrests, use more force against civilians and create an atmosphere of fear in the state’s immigrant communities. Reports of ICE renting office space in Hyattsville and the Baltimore area fueled speculation that the agency is planning massive raids like those seen in Chicago and Los Angeles. The majority of immigrants ICE arrested this year have no criminal record, according to The Baltimore Banner.

Now, Williams is sponsoring the bill again, and this time, it has a better shot. Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, has since put his support behind it.

“I have residents who are afraid to go to work, afraid to go to the grocery store, afraid to go to the doctor, to take their kids to school,” Williams told The Daily Record. “Our local jurisdictions should be focused on doing the work of our local communities.”

287(g) agreements, explained

Eight Maryland counties, all of them predominantly Republican, have a 287(g) agreement in place. Five of them signed up this year. (Baltimore County has a “memorandum of understanding” with ICE that some say resembles a 287(g) agreement.)

ICE data shows that it has 1,275 active 287(g) agreements; some jurisdictions have multiple agreements. The vast majority of those agreements — more than 1,100 — have been signed or renewed since President Donald Trump took office last January.

The 287(g) law was passed in the mid-90s amid a wave of punitive crime and anti-immigrant laws, said Cori Alonso-Yoder, a professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law who directs the school’s immigration clinic.

Alonso-Yoder said the law caused a “greater enmeshing of immigration with criminal law,” creating a “crimmigration” system in which accusations of minor offenses can lead to deportation.

More from Eye on Annapolis: The Daily Record is publishing a series of stories previewing key topics, including the following, that are expected to be tackled by the General Assembly in the weeks leading up to the 2026 session. Energy DJS abuse lawsuits Juvenile Justice Attorney General’s Office Health Care Immigration Budget State Leadership

Opponents of the system say it causes immigrants to distrust law enforcement, discouraging even victims to report crimes.

Counties can enter into any of three agreement types that all exist under the 287(g) umbrella. No county in Maryland uses the most controversial type of agreement, known as the “task-force model,” through which ICE delegates certain immigration enforcement powers to local officers. Former President Barack Obama ended that model before Trump brought it back last year.

The other two are the “jail enforcement model” and the “warrant service officer program.”

The first allows correctional officials to interrogate people booked into a jail after an arrest to assess their immigration status. The second permits jail officials to serve warrants and make arrests if a person has an immigration detainer; the jail will hold the detainee for ICE for up to two days after their local case is adjudicated.

Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler signed the jail enforcement model agreement in 2020 after campaigning on the issue. He said the program had been “demonized and vilified” by people who don’t understand it. He said his staff have identified “hundreds” of people in the country illegally.

“To me it’s public safety, no matter who’s in the White House,” Gahler said. Once Trump was elected, he said, “Now, all of a sudden, it’s evil again.”

“The legislators are going to participate in encouraging larger ICE operations in our state,” Gahler added.

In Carroll County, Sheriff James DeWees signed the warrant service officer agreement this year. He said his office serves civil immigration warrants on several people each month.

Both Gahler and DeWees said people have to face local charges before they’re referred to ICE. DeWees also expects ICE to punish the state if it passes Williams’s bill.

“I think, unfortunately, the state of Maryland is going to suffer the consequences for outlawing or banning this program statewide,” he said.

A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Limited recourse

Ending 287(g) agreements is one of few options officials have for curbing ICE’s impact in Maryland.

In addition to that effort, Williams says she intends to sponsor a bill preventing all law enforcement officers in the state from wearing masks, except in limited circumstances.

Other state officials have taken steps within their own purviews to try and protect immigrants’ civil rights.

Last spring, a state correctional officer allegedly invited ICE to detain a person at who visited Baltimore City Circuit Court for an appointment.

In response, Audrey Carrión, the court’s chief judge and administrative judge, issued an order requiring all law enforcement officers — including immigration agents — to wear their uniforms, prominently display their badges and report to the sheriff’s office to identify themselves.

And in October, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown issued guidance to local law enforcement agencies saying officers may not enforce civil immigration laws or assist federal agents in enforcing them. Williams said that guidance essentially prohibits the “task force” model, in which local officers are deputized as immigration agents.

These efforts build on a 2021 state law that stopped local jails, usually run by the county sheriff’s office, from serving as long-term detention facilities for ICE — a system which brought those counties significant revenue.

Alonso-Yoder said that law enabled some “perverse consequences.” It forced ICE to send Maryland detainees to other states, where they have less access to their families and lawyers. In Louisiana and Texas, where many are sent, judges tend to rule against them more often.

ICE also blames the law on immigrants’ days-long stays in its “hold rooms” in Downtown Baltimore, where they are only supposed to spend half a day at most. An ongoing lawsuit accuses ICE of maintaining inhumane conditions in those hold rooms, including limited access to medicine, counsel, water and sanitation.

“While we have heard the concern,” Williams said, “I think the larger concern was just jurisdictions balancing their budgets off of the brown people in our state. That just didn’t feel good.”

Retaliation against Maryland’s federal judges

Gahler’s and DeWees’s prediction of increased ICE raids is not unfounded. The Trump administration has already retaliated after Maryland officials took action to limit abuses of power.

Last year, Chief Judge George Russell III of the U.S. District Court for Maryland — a federal judge, not a state official — signed a standing order preventing deportations or removals for about two days after the defendant files a petition for writ of habeas corpus.

While not connected to any individual case, the order was viewed as a response to the Trump administration’s treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man from El Salvador who was deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process. The government acknowledged it had deported him by mistake but has since doubled down, bringing criminal charges against him and attempting to deport him to several African nations.

After Russell signed the order, the Trump administration took the unprecedented step of suing all of the state’s federal judges and the court itself. A Trump-appointed judge from Virginia — who heard the case because, as defendants, none of Maryland’s judges could preside — dismissed the case in August.

He wrote that allowing the case to move forward would “offend the rule of law.” The government is appealing.