BALTIMORE — In June, another Maryland county joined an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that would allow local officers to carry out some of the federal agency’s work, bringing the number of participating counties up to eight.

The Trump administration says these removals are necessary for national security and public safety, citing prior criminal records in the U.S. or abroad. And a number of sheriffs from around Maryland agree.

“When I have a federal partner telling me that to release this individual puts my citizens at greater risk … I would be nuts not to cooperate,” Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said.

Immigrant advocates say overreaching enforcement has fractured families statewide, and in recent months, curtailed immigrants’ rights to due process, regardless of their status in the U.S. Some worry an expanded partnership between federal and local law enforcement agencies will further imperil Maryland’s immigrants — both those who are in the country legally and those who aren’t.

The program, known as 287(g), allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to partner with local law enforcement agencies to carry out some of the federal agency’s enforcement duties, like serving warrants on behalf of the agency or turning inmates over for detention or deportation.

But many who have been arrested or deported have been accused by the federal government of having gang ties, often with little evidence — and at the same time, they’re facing a new erasure of their constitutional rights, advocates say.

Cathryn Jackson, policy director for immigration advocacy group CASA, said that local police agencies collaborating with ICE are “helping to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plan in Maryland.”

Sheriffs support ICE collaboration

The eight Maryland counties participating in various forms of 287(g) include Cecil, Frederick and Harford counties, which signed such agreements years ago. In 2025, sheriffs’ offices in Carroll, Washington, Garrett, St. Mary’s and Allegany counties signed onto the program, ICE data shows. Allegany is the newest member of the program, having joined two weeks ago.

The program has found support among law enforcement agencies in 41 of the U.S.’s 50 states, according to the federal agency. In Maryland, a number of law enforcement leaders have spoken out in support of the partnership.

Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees signed a memorandum of agreement with ICE for a 287(g) program in March, though the program has not yet been implemented there. Like some of the other sheriffs The Sun spoke to, DeWees said the program was egalitarian, as it checks the immigration status of everyone officers come into contact with.

“It would be no different than if someone came into my custody and I ran them through a database and … another state wanted them on a detainer,” he said. “We do it thousands of times a year for every other police department in the country.”

Allegany County Sheriff Craig Robertson did not respond to a request for comment by publication on why he joined the program.

In Washington County, Sheriff Brian Albert said the warrant service model offered more “clarity” for officers on how to deal with detainees with federal immigration detention orders, or detainers. The program went live June 30, Albert said.

Frederick County operates the longest active 287(g) program for a sheriff’s office nationwide, Sheriff Charles Jenkins told The Sun, adding that the partnership made his county “much safer.”

“The 287(g) program has been a very effective and invaluable public safety program for Frederick County since our partnership with ICE was implemented in 2008,” Jenkins said in a statement Wednesday.

“I stand by the results in Frederick County, and I don’t really care what the advocacy groups say,” Jenkins said earlier this year. “They don’t want any enforcement.”

287(g) by the numbers

Though data updates from ICE have been sporadic, the agency reported that in fiscal 2024, 287(g) jail enforcement programs removed 1,819 people nationwide. Warrant service officer models resulted in 817 arrests across the country.

There have been 396 Maryland 287(g) combined encounters in fiscal year 2025, according to figures ICE provided to The Sun in April. When asked for updated information in July, ICE spokesperson Casey Latimer said the data was not yet available.

Nationally, ICE removed 197,016 people in fiscal year 2025, which began Oct. 1, 2024, according to agency data published last month.

While Maryland and Delaware do not have any ICE detention facilities, bordering states Virginia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia hold eight between them. In fiscal 2025, the majority of detainees in those facilities had no ICE threat level, meaning those detained don’t have any criminal convictions, agency data shows.

The Sun asked all eight counties with 287(g) agreements for arrest data. Most did not respond. However, in St. Mary’s County, which signed onto the program in March, six “incarcerated individuals” have ICE detainers, which will be served once all local charges are completed, per the agency. In Frederick, 73 are subject to detainers.

A spokesperson for the Harford County Sheriff’s Office said releasing such data to The Sun conflicted with the terms of its memorandum of understanding with ICE. The county participates in the jail enforcement model, which screens people for immigration status as they’re booked into local jails.

Immigration experts fear 287(g) will push the number of arrests higher as local jurisdictions become empowered with new immigration enforcement responsibilities.

“There’s a lot of fear in the community,” said immigration attorney Jennifer Molina, who has offices in both Baltimore and Frederick. In her experience, she said enforcement has increased since Trump came into office, with calls coming from people who have been detained, family members calling on their behalf, or people who have been visited at home by ICE.

Maryland immigrant advocates and CASA supported the Maryland Values Act, a bill that would have stemmed local agencies’ participation in 287(g). The version of the bill that passed the legislature this year did not keep that provision, and instead focused on protecting locations such as schools, hospitals and churches from ICE, as well as maintaining immigrants’ data privacy.

Due process in the mass deportation era

Since President Donald Trump took office, a number of immigrants who came to the U.S. through both legal and illegal avenues have been arrested or deported without due process, advocates say.

Beltsville resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who came to the country illegally, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador despite a standing court order preventing his removal to his home country. The ICE agents who arrested Westminster resident and asylum seeker Elsy Berrios refused to show her a warrant. In Vermont, green-card holder Mohsen Mahdawi was jailed for more than two weeks despite not being charged with any crime.

And in Baltimore City, ICE agents detained an individual June 24 inside a Baltimore City Circuit courthouse in an action Assistant Sheriff Nicholas Blendy said breached policy.

CASA’s Jackson said she believes 287(g) is a direct threat to immigrants’ rights.

“It is very clear that 287(g) undermines due process,” she said. “It makes the facts … of the criminal case, including factual innocence, irrelevant.”

Jackson added that 287(g) puts immigrants into a criminal “pipeline” to detention or deportation whether they are arrested for minor offenses or even found not guilty.

Baltimore-Washington area immigration attorney Chirag V. Patel told The Sun that 287(g) will likely lead to law enforcement officers unfairly profiling immigrants.

“It’ll probably be a lot of profiling,” Patel said. “Even if it’s not explicit, it’ll be implicit in … their enforcement priorities and who they target and where they choose to target.”

When it comes to due process, advocates and experts say the right, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, is not very secure for non-citizens.

Georgetown University Law Center professor Emily Chertoff previously served as executive director of the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children and Yale Public Interest Fellow at Immigrant Defenders Law Center. She said while non-citizens have due process rights, “there’s a huge variation between someone who’s at the border, someone who’s in their home, in their car, [or] in immigration court.”

“People don’t realize that in practice those protections are not as strong as they might have thought or hoped,” she said.

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