Maryland's General Assembly approved two emergency bills that would prohibit state and local agencies from entering into immigration enforcement agreements with federal authorities — and require the termination of any such agreements already in place.

Senate Bill 245 passed 32–12. House Bill 444 passed the House 99–38. Both are cross-filed emergency measures, meaning they would take effect immediately upon the governor's signature.

The legislation targets what are known as 287(g) agreements — arrangements that allow local law enforcement officers to perform limited federal immigration enforcement functions under ICE supervision. If signed into law, Maryland would effectively sever that cooperation statewide.

Moore Frames Enforcement as the Problem

Gov. Wes Moore used his State of the State address to set the emotional stage for the legislation, casting federal immigration enforcement as a source of fear rather than a function of law:

"Many Marylanders are terrified. They worry about getting detained when they show up for work. They're worried about whether or not federal agents are waiting for them when they drop their kids off at school."

Notice who Moore centers as the victims: not citizens affected by illegal immigration, not communities dealing with the downstream costs of a broken border, but people worried about being detained — that is, people who may be in the country illegally and fear the consequences of enforcement. The governor of a U.S. state stood before his legislature and asked them to sympathize with those evading federal law. Just The News shares.

He then went further:

"Working together, I'm confident we can take meaningful steps to hold federal agents accountable for violating the Constitution and help those who have been harmed."

Moore offered no specific constitutional violations. No court rulings. No legal findings. Just the assertion — delivered with the weight of his office — that federal agents enforcing immigration law are somehow the ones breaking the rules. It's a remarkable inversion: the people enforcing the law become the lawbreakers, and the people violating immigration statutes become the protected class.

What 287(g) Actually Does

The agreements Maryland just voted to kill aren't rogue operations. They're voluntary partnerships, entered into by local agencies, that allow officers to assist ICE with immigration enforcement under federal supervision. They exist because local law enforcement encounters illegal immigrants during the normal course of policing — traffic stops, arrests, booking. The 287(g) framework gives those officers a lawful mechanism to cooperate with federal authorities rather than simply releasing individuals back into communities.

Ending these agreements doesn't make illegal immigrants disappear. It makes them invisible to the system. A local officer who encounters someone with an active deportation order or a criminal history flagged by ICE would, under this legislation, have no mechanism to act on that information in cooperation with federal authorities.

This is what Maryland's legislature just voted to enshrine as state policy — not transparency, not reform, but deliberate blindness.

Republicans Sound the Alarm

Del. Matt Morgan, a Republican from St. Mary's County, didn't mince words about the legislation:

"This isn't public safety. It's political pandering. Governor Moore must veto this dangerous legislation."

Morgan criticized the bills for compelling local law enforcement agencies to cancel their agreements with federal immigration authorities — stripping them of a tool they voluntarily chose to use. The emergency designation on both bills makes the timeline urgent. There is no waiting period, no cooling-off window. If Moore signs, cooperation ends immediately.

And Moore has given no indication he intends to veto. His State of the State rhetoric reads like the preamble to a signature, not a man wrestling with the decision.

The Sanctuary Escalation

What Maryland is doing isn't new in concept, but the mechanism is sharper than the sanctuary city resolutions that blue jurisdictions have passed for years. Those were often symbolic — policy memos, executive orders, informal guidance to police chiefs. This is statutory. It carries the force of emergency legislation. And it doesn't just discourage cooperation with ICE; it prohibits it and mandates the dissolution of existing partnerships.

The political logic is transparent. As the federal government moves to enforce immigration law more aggressively, blue states are racing to build legal walls around illegal immigrant populations within their borders. The goal isn't to protect constitutional rights — Moore cited no specific rights being violated. The goal is to obstruct federal enforcement by removing the local infrastructure that makes it efficient.

This creates a perverse dynamic. The same Democratic officials who insist the federal government should be solely responsible for immigration — their favorite line when pressed on border security — are now actively preventing federal agencies from doing that job within their jurisdictions. They want Washington to own the problem and simultaneously refuse to let Washington solve it.

What Comes Next

The votes weren't close. A 32–12 Senate margin and 99–38 House margin suggest veto-proof majorities if it came to that — though Moore shows no appetite for a veto. The emergency designation means this fight moves fast.

The practical consequence is straightforward: Maryland law enforcement agencies currently cooperating with ICE under 287(g) agreements will be forced to terminate those partnerships. Officers who encounter illegal immigrants — including those with criminal records or outstanding federal warrants — will have one fewer tool to keep their communities safe.

Gov. Moore described Marylanders as "terrified." He's right about that, at least in part. But the terror isn't limited to those who fear deportation. It extends to citizens in communities where cooperation between local and federal law enforcement is about to be severed by legislative fiat — not because it failed, but because it worked.