End State and Local Collaboration with ICE – Pass the Community Trust Act SB 791/HB 1575

The message:

To protect as many immigrant Marylanders as possible from this administration's campaign of terror, we must stop colluding with ICE's paramilitary force altogether. Maryland doesn't have a legal obligation to assist ICE in immigration enforcement, which is a federal responsibility and already funded at an unprecedented level. Continued voluntary collaboration is a political choice that wastes Maryland taxpayer dollars and makes our communities less safe.

HB 1575/SB791 had great hearings in the House and Senate, respectively. Now, we must urge Committee members to place the bill on a vote list and vote "Yes" on a clean bill with no carve outs or amendments that weaken the bill.

The recipient:

Maryland House Judiciary Committee
Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee
Senate President Bill Ferguson

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Your Message

Subject Pass the Community Trust Act to end Maryland’s collusion with ICE!

Maryland currently enables President Trump's cruel and lawless mass deportation agenda by allowing localities to voluntarily funnel immigrants into ICE custody. Outside of 287(g) agreements that formally deputize local law enforcement as ICE agents, this informal collaboration has funneled 4 times more Marylanders – most of whom had no criminal conviction into the deportation pipeline. Shockingly, 23 of 24 Maryland counties informally assist ICE in this way.

The Community Trust Act would affirmatively ban this practice, ceasing Maryland's complicity in the Trump administration's inhumane mass deportation agenda.

Message Body

As a Maryland resident and your constituent, I do not want Maryland's public safety resources used to support the Trump administration's quota-driven deportation dragnet. I call on you to close all existing loopholes that allow Maryland's law enforcement and correctional facilities to aid and abet ICE's lawlessness.

As we have seen with 287(g), local jails have quietly become essential to Trump's mass arrest and deportation campaign. I am pleased to see the legislature is on track to ban formal collaboration with ICE with the passage of HB 444/SB 245. The Community Trust Act is a critical next step to to 1) affirm that correctional facilities must have a judicial warrant to detain, or prolong a person's detention, in order to transfer them to ICE and 2) stop police and correctional officers from facilitating immigration arrests by reaching out to ICE directly with information about people who encounter law enforcement.

Nothing in the legislation prevents the Federal government from enforcing immigration laws or hides any information from ICE, now the most highly funded law enforcement agency in the world.

Entirely separate from formal 287(g) agreements, in 23 of 24 counties, local law enforcement and jails still notify or hold and transfer individuals to ICE. The Attorney General and extensive case law have found that honoring ICE administrative requests to detain individuals without a judicial warrant is illegal and could lead to civil lawsuits.

By virtue of operating out of local jails, this informal collaboration funnels the innocent, those who have had charges dismissed, and those who have served time for the low-level offenses into the Trump deportation pipeline often before they've even had their day in court.

Maryland must learn from states like New Jersey, which banned 287(g) but continued to permit informal collaboration with ICE. After leaving this loophole open, New Jersey saw a spike in arrests from local jails as well as in the streets. Ceasing collaboration with ICE in all forms, reduces DHS bandwidth to conduct their campaign of terror in our communities.

Continued voluntary collusion with this ICE's paramilitary forces is a political choice that wastes Maryland taxpayer dollars and makes our communities less safe.

Please protect as many of our immigrant neighbors as possible, and defend the rule of law, by passing a clean Community Trust Act.

Sincerely,

[First Name] [Last Name]

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End State and Local Collaboration with ICE – Pass the Community Trust Act SB 791/HB 1575

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