By Cathryn Jackson
Last week, in Carroll County, Maryland, a mother was stopped in her car by ICE agents. They never showed a warrant. They smashed her window. And they dragged her away in front of her children—leaving them screaming in the car.
Days earlier, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a CASA member and father of three Maryland children with special needs, was unlawfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite having a court order protecting him. The damage to his family, his livelihood and his dignity is immeasurable.
This is the face of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). And it’s not acting rogue – it’s a machine built for cruelty. Built to dehumanize. Built to tear apart families, communities and lives without regard for justice, due process or basic human decency.
These are not one-off tragedies. They are our neighbors. These are Maryland families. And these are the direct consequences of a Trump deportation system that is growing more aggressive by the day.
ICE isn’t acting alone. In many parts of Maryland, local police are doing their job for them.
This happens through a little-known federal program called 287(g). Under it, local sheriffs voluntarily sign agreements with ICE, allowing their deputies to be immigration agents. Deputies can interrogate people in jail about their immigration status. They can hold individuals until ICE arrives. In some counties across the U.S., they can even pull someone over, ask where they were born and detain them—without a single criminal charge.
The 287(g) program is infamous for racial profiling, civil rights violations and multimillion-dollar lawsuits. It turns traffic stops into deportation traps. It turns jails into ICE-holding pens. And it turns local police into the brutal arm of a federal deportation force.
When the 2025 legislative session began, only three counties in Maryland had 287(g) agreements. Now there are seven: Frederick, Cecil, Harford, Washington, Carroll, Garrett and St. Mary’s. Across the country and in Maryland, the program is expanding rapidly – especially in counties run by White, racist, Trump-aligned sheriffs eager to hunt down immigrants.
The Maryland Values Act (HB 1222) is our best—and only—tool to stop this. The bill would end all 287(g) agreements in Maryland and make sure our local police don’t work as immigration agents. It’s a clear statement that public safety should never be used to carry out federal deportation agendas.
But right now, the bill is stalled in the Senate. Every day it sits, more counties sign on. More families are torn apart. And more people are deported without warning, often without seeing a judge or having access to a lawyer.
Let’s be very clear: this program doesn’t make us safer. In fact, more than three-quarters of the people deported through 287(g) programs nationally have no criminal convictions whatsoever. Many were stopped for minor traffic issues or held briefly in jail—then turned over to ICE. They almost never see a judge. They have no opportunity to prove the racial profiling resulting in their detention. They are workers, students, caregivers, neighbors—and often parents of U.S. citizen children.
And the people most at risk? Black immigrants. They are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be jailed, and more likely to be deported. Though they make up only 7 percent of non-citizens, they account for more than 20 percent of deportations tied to criminal charges. That’s not a coincidence. That’s what happens when systems designed to over-police Black communities are handed immigration authority.
Some legislators have said they’re afraid Maryland might lose federal money if we end 287(g). That’s simply not true. 287(g) is a voluntary program. And when former President Trump tried to punish cities and states that didn’t help with immigration enforcement, he lost in court—every single time. Nine federal district courts and four federal appeals courts ruled that cutting funding was illegal. No court has ever allowed funding to be taken away for refusing to participate in 287(g).
So the law is clear. The only question is whether Maryland will continue being complicit in this cruelty.
We like to say Maryland is a welcoming state—a state that stands for fairness and justice. But those values mean nothing if we let police help ICE tear families apart. They mean nothing if we let fear and political pressure outweigh human dignity and legal rights.
We know what’s coming. ICE has publicly stated it is ramping up arrests. Officials bragged about deporting more people in the first 50 days of this year than in all of 2024. They are aggressive. And every time another sheriff signs onto 287(g), they get more power—more reach, less oversight.
The Maryland Values Act must move forward—and it must pass as a clean bill, without carve-outs or watered-down provisions that continue to allow ICE collaboration under a different name.
Maryland must stop doing ICE’s dirty work. Now.