In 2017, then-Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz signed an executive order, in part to protect immigrants who are in the county jail from federal authorities.
That order remains in place.
But there are those who believe that executive order is threatened by a recently signed agreement between the county and Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
The order states that no one in the county jail will be detained beyond their court-ordered release date unless there is a criminal warrant signed by a judicial official.
During the 2017 signing ceremony for the order Kamenetz said that “the existence of a written executive order is going to give people in the community assurances and security.”
Fast forward to 2025 and Baltimore County says there is nothing new here. The Memorandum of Understanding or MOU with ICE puts on paper what they’ve been doing at the county jail since last year.
“As I read this MOU and the executive order I do believe that they are consistent,” said James Benjamin, who is the attorney for Baltimore County.
The MOU says the county must contact ICE before someone with a federal immigration detainer or a judicial warrant is released. Then ICE will decide whether it will take custody of the inmate.
But there are sharp differences of opinion about whether that executive order and the MOU with ICE can coexist.
David Rocah, senior staff attorney with the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union, said the 2024 policy that the MOU is tied to states that the county can hold inmates for ICE beyond their release date, either up to four hours or two days depending on the type of detainer.
Speaking at a rally against the MOU in Towson last week, Rocah called it a betrayal of Kamenetz’s executive order.
“Baltimore County has no authority, none, to detain people for ICE after a judge or a jury orders their release,” Rocah said. “That’s unconstitutional.”
A county spokesman said as a practice no one is being held in the county jail beyond their release date.
Rocah said another problem with the MOU is that the county is making promises with ICE it can’t keep about notification of inmate release dates because they often are not known in advance.
“They may be released on conditions, or released on their own recognizance, or the charges may be dismissed or they may have a trial and are acquitted," Rocah said in an interview.
Cori Alonso-Yoder, assistant professor of law and the director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Maryland’s Carey School of Law, said the people most likely to get snagged by the county’s MOU with ICE aren’t the ones who are living in the U.S. without permission, but those who are playing by the rules, and therefore are on ICE’s radar screen.
“I think that’s part of the trouble with the way this policy is being laid out is there’s this diffusion of individual enforcement against folks who are likely not the ones who are most dangerous to the community,” Alonso-Yoder said.
Kamenetz died in 2018. Don Mohler, who was Kamenetz’s chief of staff when he signed the executive order in 2017, said the MOU approved by County Executive Kathy Klausmeier’s administration remains true to Kamenetz’s order.
Mohler said, “All of the approaches taken by County Executive Kamenetz, County Executive Olszewski, County Executive Klausmeier, have all been designed to be constitutionally solid and common sense approaches to public safety.”
At last week’s protest there was anger that the county would cut any kind of deal with ICE. There were signs that said things like “Democracy Not Dictatorship” and “Neighbors Not Targets.”
“We should not encourage masked individuals with heavy weapons to enter our public buildings, our schools, our faith-based institutions, our places or worship,” said Baltimore County Councilman Izzy Patoka, a Democrat. “That is not what we ought to be agreeing to. But folks I think that's what we agreed to."
But the county says that is not what was agreed to.
Klausmeier’s press secretary, Dakarai Turner, said Patoka is weaponizing misinformation for political purposes.
“The mere suggestion that this agreement invites masked and armed people into our schools or places of worship evokes disturbing imagery and stirs painful memories,” Turner said in a statement. “Spreading misinformation does nothing to make people safe, it is instead a disservice to the people of Baltimore County and a devaluation of responsible discourse.”
The county points out that the MOU is not a 287G agreement. That’s when local police officers are in essence deputized to help with federal immigration enforcement. That is not happening.
The driver for the county to sign the MOU is the threat of losing federal money, because earlier this year the county landed on the Justice Department’s list of sanctuary jurisdictions. It gets about $400 million a year from the feds, which makes up roughly nine percent of its revenue.
County attorney Benjamin said. “There was concern obviously about impacts to federal funding so we wanted to work and be able to memorialize what has already been in place so that way we’ll be able to get off the list.”
County Executive Klausmeier says it never should have been on the sanctuary jurisdiction list. Officials say it happened because ICE thought the county was ignoring its immigration detainers when in fact ICE was sending them to the wrong agencies.
