Recent reports suggest that the Trump administration will escalate attacks on local officials who decline unconditional cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in its indiscriminate efforts to deport immigrants (Trump official suggests arrests of ‘sanctuary’ leaders could happen, May 2, 2025). The ICE director has threatened to arrest officials of sanctuary cities.

Is Annapolis a sanctuary city? Is Anne Arundel County a sanctuary county? Officials in both jurisdictions have developed cooperation policies that respect our outdated immigration laws but recognize the Trump administration’s willingness to ruin the lives of legal immigrants as collateral damage in its culture wars.

There is no policy in either Annapolis or Anne Arundel County that prevents local officials from cooperating with ICE to detain immigrants who have no claim to legal status, or from cooperating to detain legal immigrants who, after respect for their due-process rights, have been found to have engaged in serious crimes. Both jurisdictions have done so.

Nor is there a policy in either jurisdiction that requires local cooperation with ICE in their efforts to deport legal immigrants in violation of the immigrants’ constitutional and human rights.

The Supreme Court has long held that immigrants in the U.S. under any form of legal permission, such as a student visa or a green card, are entitled to the same constitutional rights as all U.S. citizens. Those rights include freedom of speech and the right to due process of law.

This administration has intentionally deprived legal residents and citizens of their constitutional and human rights, in many cases in violation of court orders, in order to fulfill the president’s nativist demand that immigration officials meet arbitrary and unlawful deportation quotas. Remember the legal immigrant sent to a sadistic foreign prison in violation of a court order.

ICE’s conduct requires that our local officials continue to exercise extraordinary care in response to ICE requests for cooperation, lest they make us all complicit in the administration’s depraved, illegal behavior.

When ICE comes for our local officials, stand with them. They deserve our support and our gratitude.

Bob Gallagher, Annapolis

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