Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in an August 2019 worksite raid in Canton, Mississippi. (Photo courtesy Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)
Maryland House Bill 1222,Public Safety – Immigration Enforcement (Maryland Values Act), is a compromise worth supporting. It satisfies the need to remove some violent offenders from our country while at the same time recognizing the harm that can be done by including state and local law enforcement in an overzealous enforcement of federal immigration laws.
This bill clarifies the involvement of state and local law enforcement and correctional facilities in three ways: by requiring the detention and transfer of undocumented individuals to federal immigration authorities under certain circumstances; by restricting local jurisdictions from entering into certain immigration enforcement agreements; and by restricting current agreements any jurisdiction may currently have in place: “jurisdictions with an existing immigration enforcement agreement shall exercise the termination provision contained in the immigration enforcement agreement not later than July 1, 2025.” Similar contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain undocumented immigrants in local jails, Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGSAs), were ended in Maryland through the Dignity Not Detention Act in 2021.
Though there are 64 sponsors of the bill in the House of Delegates, there will undoubtedly be opposition from those citing a recent poll that found 75.7 % of Marylanders “in support of requiring local officials in Maryland to cooperate with federal law enforcement agents in their effort to arrest and deport aliens in Maryland who have committed crimes.”
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Under this proposal, those convicted of a violent crime who are “not lawfully present in the United States shall be detained for up to 48 hours and transferred to federal immigration authorities.”
While this proposed legislation would preserve a working relationship with federal immigration enforcement in certain circumstances, it would eliminate the controversial 287 (g) program agreements with ICE. Currently these agreements exist in Frederick, Harford and Cecil Counties. Anne Arundel county dropped out of their 287 (g) agreement in 2018 after one year.
287(g) is a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that added Section 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). 287(g) delegates to local law enforcement the authority to perform certain immigration enforcement functions.
The harm done to local police and their relationship with the communities they protect and serve far outweighs any benefit derived from 287(g). The 287(g) program is antithetical to the philosophy of community policing, undermining trust between police officers and neighborhoods in the communities where that trust is most needed to build collaborative partnerships.
In Frederick County, we have experienced the negative effects of 287(g) ranging from racial profiling and discrimination to harassment, illegal stops, arrests and detainment that have led to two civil actions against the county, both of which found racial profiling and unlawful detainment had taken place: Santos v Frederick County Commissioners and Medrano v Jenkins.
287(g) has produced a negative image of our community. It has attracted protests against the program and produced divisiveness as it undermined trust in law enforcement over this issue.
Professional leaders in major local law enforcement agencies have denounced local law enforcement involvement in 287(g), including those in organizations taking specific positions against the enforcement of immigration laws by local law enforcement: The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major Cities/Counties Chiefs Association, the Police Executive Research Forum, and the Police Foundation. For years now, Marylanders from across the state have testified in the General Assembly as to why our state should not continue to participate in the 287(g)program.
This proposed legislation will not satisfy those demanding draconian measures to round up and deport every undocumented person regardless of their circumstance or how long they have been in the United States. It will also fail to provide every possible protection to those who have been productive members of our communities, sometimes for a decade or more, yet lack proper documentation. In this proposal, both sides get something they want but neither gets all they want. This is an opportunity to show that in an important issue the art of compromise in Maryland politics is not a lost art.