By Megan Sayles | AFRO Staff Writer
msayles@afro.com

As U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) operations intensify nationwide, community organizations have become the eyes and ears of their neighborhoods—monitoring the agency’s presence and alerting residents to protect themselves and their neighbors.

In Baltimore County, nonprofits like We Are CASA have observed a spectrum of enforcement actions.

“We have seen a range of activity, including traffic stops and ICE showing up in neighborhoods or in seeming response to tips,” said Cathryn Ann Paul Jackson, public policy director for We Are CASA. “Beyond actual ICE activity in Baltimore County, we have seen many detentions of Baltimore County residents across the DMV, as community members tend to travel across counties and cities for work.”

We Are CASA, a national nonprofit headquartered in Maryland, is dedicated to empowering and improving the quality of life for working-class Black, Latino, Afro-descendent, Indigenous and immigrant communities. Jackson’s personal connection to this mission led her to the organization. A daughter of immigrants from Guyana and Trinidad, she said she grew up witnessing firsthand how immigration policy can define families’ safety, opportunity and sense of belonging.

She said the locations and times of ICE operations in Baltimore County have varied over time.

“We have consistently seen ICE arrest people at their check-in appointments, which were ironically created as an alternative to detention and are now being abused to trap people into custody,” said Jackson. “For a period of time, we were witnessing a significant amount of arrests along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway by U.S. Park Police, who were using a previously rarely enforced law against driving commercial vehicles on this road as a pretext to profile immigrant drivers, detain them and hand them over to ICE.”

Last fall, Baltimore County entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with ICE, removing the locality from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) sanctuary jurisdictions list and formalizing a policy for notifying ICE before the release of inmates with federal immigration detainers or judge-signed warrants.

The agreement codified an existing practice within the Baltimore County Department of Corrections. The MOU is not a 287(g) agreement, which is a partnership between local law enforcement and ICE to delegate immigration enforcement authority to police officers. Those agreements were banned by the state of Maryland on Feb. 17.

However, Jackson criticized the policy memorialized in the MOU, saying that although it is carefully drafted to avoid legal violations, it effectively allows detention centers to hold people past their court-ordered release so that ICE can take them into custody.

“This is highly problematic given many of the charges that land people in county correctional facilities to begin with are for misdemeanors of which they may not even ultimately be proven guilty and convicted,” said Jackson. “It results in a subversion of the local criminal justice system as a means to further racial profiling and do ICE’s dirty work.”

Baltimore County has said it entered into the MOU in an effort to preserve its access to federal funding. The locality explained its reasoning on a FAQ page about its removal from the DOJ’s sanctuary jurisdictions list.

“Inclusion on DOJ’s list could risk significant federal funding, on which the county and constituents depend,” the entry read. “Signing the MOU ensures that the county avoids risks to federal funding that is used to provide needed services.”

Baltimore County’s removal is not unique, as neither Maryland nor any of its counties appear on the DOJ’s list. Still, community members worry that the county’s MOU with ICE could lead to wrongful detentions and the misidentification of residents.

Immigration detainers are not always confirmation of a person’s immigration status—or lack thereof. They are requests by ICE that can be issued without a judicial determination and do not, on their own, establish a person’s legal status.

“We’re very concerned about errors occurring here in the county because of the amped up nature of this mass deportation push,” said Patterson. “This is a replacement theory-driven immigration policy. That means that at the same time we are importing White South African Afrikaaners—who at one time essentially colonized South Africa and oppressed Black South Africans—we are fast deporting people of color. All of us who are the minority can be mistaken for ‘unlawful immigrants.’”

The recent escalation in Minneapolis has heightened Patterson’s concern. He said the city has effectively been made a battleground.

Patterson said the Baltimore County NAACP wants the public to recognize that ICE operates as a militarized organization, unlike local police. He urged people to consider avoiding areas where ICE is active whenever possible and to exercise caution if they encounter agents. If approached, Patterson stressed that people verify warrants are properly signed and directed at them, assert their right to remain silent and contact an attorney before answering questions or consenting to searches.

He also encouraged residents to notify the Baltimore County NAACP of any encounters with ICE.

“We don’t want to wait for Minnesota in Maryland before speaking out about this,” said Patterson. “We want to equip our people to protect themselves behaviorally, consciously and conscientiously because these things are coming to pass. The imprint is among us and we need, therefore, to be aware.”

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