Over the past 18 years, officers at Maryland's Frederick County jail have asked thousands of inmates two standard questions: What country are you a citizen of? And where were you born?
If the answer was anything other than the United States, local officers deputized with special federal authority launched an investigation into whether the person was in the country illegally. Since 2008, Frederick County has turned over 1,884 people to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Sheriff Charles Jenkins said.
But that is coming to an immediate halt under a law signed Tuesday by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore that prohibits immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government.
The new Maryland law highlights the extent to which Democratic-led states are pushing back against President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. Ten states — all led by Democrats — now have statewide policies prohibiting law enforcement officers from cooperating in one of the primary programs Trump is using to carry out his agenda of mass deportations.
Laws banning cooperative agreements with ICE were signed earlier this month in New Mexico and took effect last month in Maine. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also is backing legislation that would ban local law officers from being deputized by ICE. And Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger recently terminated state ICE agreements signed under her Republican predecessor, though her order didn't cancel existing arrangements with local sheriffs.
Democratic resistance has increased as the Trump administration faces mounting scrutiny over its large-scale immigration enforcement efforts in several cities and the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota.
“There needs to be accountability for this organization, because right now the Trump-Vance ICE operation is not moving with proper accountability measures,” Moore told reporters after signing the new restrictions.
The longtime Republican sheriff of Frederick County contends the termination of a cooperative agreement with ICE will force him to let some people out of jail who may later commit more crimes.
“I’m extremely disappointed with the legislation," Jenkins said, "because really and truly, it’s going to put the public at risk in a lot of ways.”
ICE agreements rise tenfold under Trump
Upon taking office last year, Trump revived a decades-old program that trains local law officers to interrogate and detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
The 287(g) program — named for a section of the 1996 law that created it — had been used during President Joe Biden's administration only for immigrants already jailed or imprisoned on charges. But Trump expanded it to include local task forces that can make arrests on the streets, resurrecting a model that former President Barack Obama had discontinued amid concerns about racial profiling.
Participation in the program has exploded, from 135 agreements in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 current agreements in a total of 41 states and territories. Some local agencies have multiple agreements covering different immigration enforcement functions.
About 800 entities have task force pacts, granting the most expansive authority. As an incentive, ICE offers local agencies that sign task force agreements $100,000 for new vehicles. And for each trained task force officer, ICE covers the salary, benefits and $7,500 for equipment.
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Texas — all led by Republicans — require local jails to participate in the program. Those states account for half of all 287(g) agreements.
The growth in ICE agreements has come alongside a surge in federal immigration enforcement funding. A big tax-cut law Trump signed last year allots $150 billion for immigration enforcement, including more than $46 billion to hire 10,000 ICE agents and $45 billion to expand immigrant detention centers.
Less cooperation could mean more ICE agents, some say
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Nine Maryland counties with Republican sheriffs have cooperative agreements with ICE. Those pacts must end under the new law, which passed overwhelmingly in the Democratic-led General Assembly.
Maryland House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic when she was 8, said the bill shows that Maryland values civil rights.
“We value empathy,” she said. “We value peoples’ contribution. We value the Constitution. We value and support and protect civil rights.”
But banning cooperative agreements could lead ICE to send more of its own officers to the state, some Republican sheriffs and lawmakers said.
“I think what you’ll see is more immigrant enforcement, not less,” said Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, whose agency has turned over about 430 inmates to ICE for over the past nine years. “Our program was the safest way and the best way to identify people” in the U.S. illegally.
The Department of Homeland Security said the new law "will make Maryland less safe” and increase its workload there.
“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, our law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities,” the department said in a statement.
New ICE limits are mirroring public pushback
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities, according to an AP-NORC poll that suggests political independents are increasingly uncomfortable with his tactics.
“The growing public pushback against Trump's immigration enforcement – especially in more Democratic-leaning states – has created political pressure and a political opening to pass laws like the one in Maryland,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
On Tuesday, the Virginia Senate passed a bill on party lines that would place hefty guardrails on any proposed 287(g) agreements. The bill still must go to the House.
“I’m seeking to give some comfort to thousands of men, women and children in the Commonwealth who are living in fear that federal agents might send them or their family members to a country they fled, or a country they have never been to,” said Democratic state Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim, who put forward the bill.
Lawmakers in New Mexico also cited the intense immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota as a reason to limit cooperation with ICE. The New Mexico measure prohibits state and local government contracts for ICE detention facilities and bars agreements that allow local law officers to carry out federal immigration functions.
Curry County, a rural area about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Amarillo, Texas, is the only New Mexico jurisdiction with a 287(g) agreement. Sheriff Michael Brockett said the arrangement has provided a secure way to transfer people to ICE custody, “rather than federal agents searching for released prisoners on the streets and in neighborhoods of our community.”
Associated Press writer Olivia Diaz contributed to this report.
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