Maryland Democrat calls on ICE to ditch controversial sheriff’s office

Maryland Democratic Rep. David Trone is calling on federal immigration authorities to break ties with a controversial sheriff’s department over allegations of systemic civil rights abuses.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Trone asked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to terminate its 287(g) agreement with the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office.

“Several of my constituents have reported being harassed due to their perceived race or ethnicity and subjected to unwarranted traffic stops by the Sheriff’s Office, a pattern that local organizations have corroborated,” wrote Trone.

Under the 287(g) program, local law enforcement are deputized by ICE to help enforce federal immigration laws.

There are two models for 287(g) agreements: the jail enforcement model, which allows deputized local officers to interrogate detainees about their immigration status; and the warrant service officer model, which does not permit interrogations but allows local officers within local jails and prisons to arrest people suspected of violating immigration laws.

ICE previously had two other models, including one that allowed local law enforcement to stop and question individuals about their immigration status, but the agency discontinued those in 2012, citing “more efficient use of resources for focusing on priority cases.”

“ICE maintains authority and strict oversight of its 287(g) agreements – routinely evaluating overall effectiveness of the program. Any claims or indication of misconduct related to 287(g) programming is treated with the utmost scrutiny and fully investigated – penalties for violations can include removal of individual program authority and/or revocation of agreements,” an agency spokesperson told The Hill in an email.

Trone’s letter cites a 2017 research study published in the Journal on Migration and Human Security that found Frederick County deputies arrested 11 to 13 more Hispanics every month from 2008 to 2017 because of the 287(g) program.

That uptick raised concerns about ethnic profiling and trumped-up charges for Hispanic detainees to initiate immigration proceedings.

“That is, in a jurisdiction that participates in the jail model, an officer might arrest a Hispanic individual for a very minor offence in order to process them through the jail and determine their immigration status, when perhaps without the program they may have only issued a citation,” wrote Michael Coon, the University of Tampa expert who authored the report.

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins said his office’s participation in the program had no such effect.

“This is strictly a jail-based program inside of our detention center. It has nothing to do with our policing on the street, with our contact with the public and carrying out our law enforcement functions. It is strictly after someone is arrested, physically taken into a central booking. That’s where it’s determined whether or not they’re in the country illegally and everybody is screened the same way. So it has nothing to do with the way we police,” Jenkins told The Hill.

According to Trone’s letter, “the Sheriff’s Office has also subjected Black people in Frederick to traffic stops at a rate almost double their population, according to the most recent data it reported to the state.”

In July, the ACLU filed a complaint against Jenkins, asking the Department of Homeland Security — ICE’s parent agency — to terminate the 287(g) agreement.

The ACLU quoted Jenkins as calling immigrants “inherently violent,” “illegal aliens,” and “hardcore gangbangers,” suggesting immigrants should be transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention center and linking immigrants to “chemical warfare against the United States.”

“Jenkins might believe he is not accountable to anyone, but the Frederick immigrant community remain steadfast in their advocacy against him,” Nick Taichi Steiner, staff attorney at the ACLU of Maryland, said in an ACLU statement announcing the complaint.

“The federal government must be consistent in holding Jenkins accountable, investigate his and his office’s misconduct, and end the 287(g) agreement with the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office.”

Jenkins’s tenure has been controversial beyond the civil rights allegations against him and his office.

Last month, Jenkins reinstated himself after an administrative suspension following an indictment in federal court over an alleged ploy to purchase illegal machine guns using his department’s letterhead for use in an associate’s firing range.

Though Trone did not mention that scandal in his letter, he did cite a March 2023 incident when the local jail had a major sewage leak.

“… dozens of detained individuals complained that following a sewage system collapse, they were surrounded by human feces for hours,” Trone said. “They described being forced to sleep in their own feces and locked into their cells, instead of being moved to another location. The jail also has a history of people dying by suicide or suffering medical crises while detained.”

Jenkins denied those allegations and lashed out at Trone.

“He’s running for a United States Senate seat in the state of Maryland. And I believe that he thinks that attacking this program will garner support in all the immigrant communities across the state, particularly the Latino communities. And it probably will, but this is this is false rhetoric, it’s strictly political,” said Jenkins.

—Updated Thursday at 3 p.m.