Two Maryland sheriffs are telling Gov. Wes Moore they will not comply with his expected ban on cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE — and at least one county government is backing them up with a formal resolution.
Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees and Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins both declared they will continue working with federal immigration authorities regardless of a bill Moore is expected to sign that would end official 287(g) agreements between local police and ICE.
As Breitbart reported, eight Maryland counties currently operate under those agreements, which allow local officers to flag and temporarily detain noncitizens for ICE processing.
DeWees didn't mince words:
"No politician or legislative body is going to tell me that I can't communicate with another law enforcement agency on matters of public safety in my community. I'm not going to stop."
He added that he plans to create an internal policy within his office to continue cooperating with ICE — and pointed out a familiar pattern with Annapolis governance:
"The bill bans the agreements, and then in typical Annapolis fashion, they supply no alternative."
That line deserves attention. It captures something chronic about sanctuary-style governance: Democrats dismantle enforcement mechanisms and offer nothing in their place. No substitute process. No alternative framework. Just a prohibition — and a prayer that nobody notices the gap.
Sheriff Jenkins framed the legislation exactly as it should be framed — as a political operation, not a public safety measure:
"This is all political. You can put any lipstick you want on it; it's all political. The Democrats don't want any cooperation with ICE. They don't want any enforcement whatsoever."
Maryland's current 287(g) framework allows two types of agreements. One permits correctional officers to flag noncitizens to ICE and detain them for up to 48 hours. The other allows officers to serve warrants on jailed noncitizens. These are not rogue operations. They are structured, federally authorized programs designed to let local law enforcement assist in immigration enforcement within clear legal boundaries.
Moore's bill would end both.
The question every Maryland resident should ask: Who benefits when local police are prohibited from cooperating with federal law enforcement? It isn't the communities these sheriffs serve. It isn't the legal immigrants who followed the rules. The only beneficiaries are illegal immigrants who would otherwise be identified and processed through lawful channels.
While sheriffs are taking individual stands, Washington County's Board of County Commissioners approved a resolution making their position official. The resolution declared the county's intent to support DHS and ICE, stating in part:
"The Board of County Commissioners of Washington County hereby declares its intent to support DHS and ICE in the enforcement of our nation's borders, safeguarding the integrity of our immigration system, and ensuring that all persons are treated with dignity and compassion within our jurisdiction."
That language matters. It affirms enforcement and dignity simultaneously — the combination that Democrats insist is impossible but that local officials practice every day. Washington County didn't need a lecture from Annapolis about compassion. They wrote it into their resolution while Moore was busy trying to handcuff their police.
The governor's rhetoric on immigration enforcement has leaned heavily on emotional appeal — and at least one of those appeals collapsed under scrutiny. Moore claimed on Sunday that ICE was "using their budget to put untrained and unaccountable agents into our communities and detain five-year-olds."
This echoed a viral claim pushed by Rep. Ilhan Omar, who posted:
"ICE just detained a 5-year-old child. Don't tell us this is about 'the worst of the worst.' That's a lie. Absolutely vile."
The actual facts told a different story. The child in question, five-year-old Liam Ramos, was being driven to school by his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal immigrant. When ICE agents approached the vehicle, Arias fled and left the child behind. ICE officers stayed with the boy and protected him until he could be handed over safely.
ICE didn't detain a five-year-old. A father abandoned his child while running from law enforcement. Those are two radically different stories, and the one the Democrats told was the false one.
This is the playbook: take an emotionally devastating image — an agent and a kindergartner — strip it of context, and deploy it as a weapon against enforcement itself. It doesn't matter that the claim was debunked. It served its purpose the moment it went viral. Moore repeated it on Sunday as though the correction never happened.
Many of the illegal immigrants ICE is arresting have already been ordered removed by a federal judge. Years of minimal enforcement under the Biden administration allowed a backlog to build — people who were supposed to leave didn't, and built lives that now include children. That makes enforcement harder emotionally, but not less necessary legally. The complexity of those situations is a direct consequence of the previous administration's refusal to enforce the law in real time. Blaming ICE for the difficulty of arrests that should have happened years ago is like blaming the fire department for the damage caused by the arson.
While Maryland works to sever cooperation between local and federal law enforcement, Texas is going the opposite direction. Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock announced in January that the state is offering sheriffs up to $140,000 to bolster cooperation with ICE, tying the funding directly to participation in the 287(g) program.
Two states. Two approaches. One pays its sheriffs to cooperate with federal law enforcement. The other is preparing to make that cooperation illegal.
The contrast tells you everything about where the Democrat Party stands on immigration enforcement in 2026 — not in the middle, not at some reasonable compromise position, but actively working to prevent local officials from upholding federal law. Moore's bill doesn't reform the system. It doesn't propose a better enforcement mechanism. It simply builds a wall between the cops who encounter illegal immigrants and the federal agency tasked with processing them.
Sheriffs in Maryland are elected officials. They answer to voters, not to the governor's mansion. DeWees and Jenkins are making a calculated decision that the people who put them in office want immigration laws enforced — and they're willing to stake their political futures on that bet.
Moore is making the opposite calculation: that the Democrat base in Maryland cares more about shielding illegal immigrants from federal enforcement than about the public safety concerns of residents in Carroll, Frederick, and Washington counties.
One of those calculations is grounded in law. The other is grounded in politics. Jenkins already told you which is which.
