After Maureen Wambui immigrated to the United States from Kenya a decade ago, she initially navigated life without a car, attended community college at night and eventually landed a job in finance.

“I came to the U.S., just as many of us do,” she said, “looking for opportunity, looking for jobs, going back to school and having a better future for our kids.”

She worked hard to build a life here, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, but she worries about how a deal Baltimore County inked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in October will affect immigrants like her.

She and her family are Black. She speaks with an accent. ICE has demonstrated that it’s arresting and deporting immigrants, regardless of their criminal record. Even U.S. citizens have been picked up and detained.

The county’s deal with ICE, known as a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, locks in a longstanding agreement that former County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. agreed to in June 2024 to hold inmates in the county’s detention center past their release dates if ICE has a detainer against them.

Wambui and other Baltimore County immigrants see the agreement as an extension of Trump’s agenda against immigrants like themselves.

The county’s actions, meanwhile, sparked questions about their constitutionality from immigration and legal experts, while county officials defend them.

Both County Administrative Officer D’Andrea Walker, who signed the MOU, and County Executive Kathy Klausmeier declined to be interviewed for this story.

Is Baltimore County’s ICE agreement constitutional?

Depends on whom you ask.

Baltimore County Attorney James Benjamin said in an interview that the county has the authority to hold inmates for up to 48 hours past their release dates based on federal regulations established in 1985.

The original agreement requires the county corrections department to hold an individual for up to 48 hours if a federal judge had signed an immigration detainer for anyone in the county’s custody.

If anyone being held by the county has a non-judicial detainer signed by an ICE administrative officer, county corrections officials must hold the individual for up to four hours, under the agreement.

It also stipulates that the county is encouraged “to provide ICE with a forty-eight-hour notice” of any detainee’s release.

Benjamin stressed that neither the MOU nor the corrections department’s inmate processing manual are voluntary collaborations between local officers and ICE officials to enforce immigration law.

“This is not a 287(g) agreement. This MOU does not deputize county law enforcement, corrections officers to perform certain functions of federal immigration agents,” he said. “It does not delegate the authority to perform specified immigration officer functions under ICE’s direction and oversight. Again, it memorializes the agreement that was in place in June of ’24. It’s just that basic.”

David Rocah, an attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, disagreed, noting that the federal regulations cited by Benjamin govern 287(g) agreements.

“What that shows, with all due respect, is that the Baltimore County law department doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing,” Rocah said. “They cannot in the same breath say this is not a 287(g) agreement and at the same time say what we’re doing is perfectly legal because of the regulations governing the 287(g) agreement.”

University of Baltimore law professor Elizabeth Keyes agrees with Rocah’s opinion, adding that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to ask the county to hold inmates past their release dates.

“The federal government doesn’t get to decide who stays in state-run law enforcement facilities,” she said. “The other constitutional piece is the liberty deprivation. ... There’s a due process violation for the individuals affected by the policy.”

Dakarai Turner, a spokesperson for Klausmeier, disputed that the federal regulation Benjamin cited applies to voluntary agreements governing immigration enforcement.

“The County’s position is that the agreement is not unconstitutional, and for that reason we are not reconsidering the MOU with ICE,” Turner said. “However, we remain committed to transparency, open communication, and continued engagement with community members to answer questions and listen to concerns.”

How did we get here?

In April 2024, a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge suspended the sentence of convicted sex offender Raul Calderon-Interiano, citing the time he’d already served. The court required the man from Guatemala, who had a 2015 removal order, to register as a Tier I sex offender but released him.

Walt Pesterfield, the director of the county’s corrections department, said ICE officials during President Joe Biden’s administration complained that his department released Calderon-Interiano before it should have.

Olszewski, now a Democratic member of Congress, said in an interview that the incident prompted an important conversation between his administration and Biden-era ICE officials.

“You got to remember this was under the Biden administration, which actually was focused on the deportation of convicted violent offenders,” he said. “And if you’re here without documentation, if you’re a convicted violent offender, in my opinion, you should be deported.”

The conversation led Olszewski and federal immigration officials to craft an operating procedure for the county corrections department — the original agreement the MOU memorialized.

That agreement emphasized providing as much notice as possible to ICE, with a focus on convicted, violent offenders, Olszewski said.

If he faced the same decision under Trump, the congressman said, he would have acted differently.

“You have to talk to the current county administration about the current policy,” Olszewski said. “And all I can say is I would have approached the conversation very differently under the current circumstances.”

Responding to community fear

On an early December night, Wambui attended Democratic council hopeful Shawn McIntosh’s campaign launch.

She said Baltimore County’s immigrant community often feels left out, which is why she wears many hats. She serves on the county’s Democratic Women’s Club and as an adviser to Gov. Wes Moore on the state’s Commission on African Affairs, in addition to juggling a full-time job, parenthood and marriage.

Despite being plugged into local government, Wambui still was shocked by the county’s agreement with ICE.

“There’s no transparency and genuineness to say what exactly is going on and how our community should perceive this,” she said.

Turner said the county held two listening sessions in December to assuage community concerns about the agreements. They will hold another Jan. 10 at the Baltimore Association of Nepalese in America in Parkville, he said.

Wambui attended one of the sessions but still found herself confused and scared for her fellow immigrants.

“The next fear … the first thing that comes to mind is there’s going to be in an increase in ICE activity,” she said.

On Monday, Councilman Izzy Patoka introduced two bills that would set aside resources and establish protections for immigrants living in the county. Each requires the votes of five of seven council members.

Patoka — a Democrat who is running for county executive — said he was inspired to put guardrails against ICE.

“As a legislator you can either sit on the sidelines and watch or we can take action,” he said.

If passed, one of his bills would prohibit any county employee, department or agency from discriminating against anyone not born in the United States based on citizenship, nationality or immigration status, according to a draft copy.

The other bill would codify the Office of Immigrant Affairs, housed under the county executive’s office.

Neither piece of potential legislation appears to affect the county’s agreement with ICE. The council will hold a final reading and vote for both bills on Feb. 2.

This article has been updated to correct that Baltimore County corrections officials must hold individuals with non-judicial detainers signed by an ICE administrative officer for up to four hours past their release time.