Overview
- Seventeen of Maryland’s 24 elected county sheriffs filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, with the Federation for American Immigration Reform listed as the filer and the state, governor and attorney general named as defendants.
- The Community Trust Act, passed as emergency legislation, bars local authorities from holding people for ICE on administrative warrants and requires a judicial warrant for transfers while exempting convicted felons and registered sex offenders.
- Sheriffs say the law forces them to choose between complying with state law and assisting federal immigration agents and warned it could lead to the release of people ICE seeks to remove, citing local jail populations and public-safety concerns.
- Immigrant-rights and civil-rights groups including the ACLU of Maryland and regional NAACP leaders defended the law as necessary to protect community trust in policing, and Gov. Wes Moore allowed the bill to become law without his signature while warning of implementation challenges.
- The act is scheduled to take effect in early June unless a federal court issues an injunction, a ruling that could shape how Maryland counties implement the law and whether states may limit local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement after the earlier ban on 287(g) agreements.