DOJ Sues Maryland Over Sanctuary Immigration Policies
“The Department of Justice will always defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and it does so today by challenging Maryland.”
The Justice Department sued Maryland and state Attorney General Anthony Brown on Thursday over sanctuary policies the department says unlawfully interfere with federal immigration enforcement.
The department said Maryland facilities have refused to transfer illegal aliens into federal custody even after immigration authorities presented routine detainers, formal requests that a local jail or facility hold an individual for up to 48 hours so ICE can take custody. Ignoring a detainer doesn’t just inconvenience federal agents; it means criminal aliens can walk out the door before ICE ever shows up. Federal officials argue that Maryland’s pattern of non-cooperation has materially disrupted enforcement operations and put the public at risk.
🚨Justice Department Sues Maryland Over Sanctuary Policies
“Federal immigration officers merely enforce the laws that our Nation’s elected representatives in Congress passed, reflecting the will of We the People,” said @ASGWoodward. “When sanctuary jurisdictions enact laws to… pic.twitter.com/OrWODBbVZj
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) July 9, 2026
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward put it bluntly:
“Federal immigration officers merely enforce the laws that our Nation’s elected representatives in Congress passed, reflecting the will of We the People. When sanctuary jurisdictions enact laws to shield illegal aliens from federal law enforcement, it is not merely federal law that is violated, but the voices of everyday American voters silenced. Today’s suit proves that this Department will never stand for such lawless action from blue state leaders.”
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who leads the Civil Division, added:
“The American people are ultimately the ones who suffer when states pass these irresponsible sanctuary policies. The Department of Justice will always defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and it does so today by challenging Maryland’s efforts to thwart federal immigration enforcement.”
The Justice Department argues that Maryland’s policies are preempted by federal law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The department also accused state and local officials of intentionally obstructing federal operations.
Acting Attorney General Blanche has directed the Civil Division to identify state and local laws, policies, and practices that facilitate violations of federal law or interfere with lawful federal operations.
Maryland is the 21st target in the Civil Division’s ongoing campaign against sanctuary policies. Prior cases include Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York.
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Comments
Instead of lawsuits, which really hold no one accountable, why not criminal prosecutions under 8 USC s1324. The threat of incarceration might adjust their behavior
No sanctuary state or city official has ever been caught violating that law. Not even once, in all the 40 years or so that sanctuary jurisdictions have been in operation. Two judges of non- sanctuary jurisdictions have been caught; if it were happening in sanctuary jurisdictions how could they not catch even one? That means it’s very unlikely that it’s happening on any significant scale.
Refusal to cooperate does not violate any federal law, for the simple reason that Congress can’t make a law requiring state or local cooperation.
That al depends on how the DOJ interprets the law,..Providing safe haven can certainly fit the category of harboring
No, it can’t, because all the state is doing is standing on its constitutional right, so any law that would prevent it from doing so is automatically invalid.
I agree with the commentor up above: bring criminal prosecutions against these bad faith state actors who thwart the efforts of ICE in order to give aid and comfort to these foreign invaders.
That said, something is better that nothing – like what we got from lil miss worthless, Pam Bondi, and the year that squandered.
That would be a frivolous prosecution, and any prosecutor who brought it would be violating their oath.
And as we’ve seen when Democrats do it over and over and over, there’s absolutely no downside to that. So why not?
This essentially an extradition request from state to federal. If such a request comes from another state, they’re legally required to honor it. I fail to see why this is different.
(Gee, I wonder if this comment is directed at anyone.)
Detainer requests ain’t warrants …mores the pity. Frankly that’s not such an insurmountable issue there’s potentially all sorts of avenues to get a ‘real’ arrest warrant failure to file income taxes, use of false ID, stolen ID/SSA#, false info on I-9 paperwork, working without authorization, applying/receiving Federal benefits they ain’t entitled to receive (Sec 8 housing could be a goldmine as local ‘housing authorities’ administer the program and sanctuary jurisdictions seem to stretch the minor exceptions to non compliance) and even failure to register for Selective Service. What we really need is a Congress willing to pass straight forward statute that makes clear any continuous unlawful presence in the USA is a criminal v civil violation. Visa over stay would be simple, anyone not exiting by end of visa gets a warrant issued. Same for other categories of permission that have an end date like TPS. Issuing automatic Federal arrest warrants would solve much of the problem; 1/3 ish of the illegal population come from visa over stays and others whose permission lapsed.
If the feds have an actual warrant (not an “administrative warrant” that they wrote for themselves, a real warrant issued by a judge on probable cause) then nothing prevents them from going wherever this person is and arresting them. If they have probable cause to believe the person is on private property (such as a city jail) they can get a warrant to enter that property. No state cooperation is necessary, because the feds have their own enforcement power.
Extradition is when a state finds out that someone it wants is in another state. It can’t just go into that state and execute its warrant. A warrant from one state is invalid in any other state. It has to ask the other state to arrest the person on its behalf and hold him till it comes and picks him up, and the constitution requires states to honor such requests.
Remember the constitution is there to protect states from the federal government, not from each other. So states can make certain demands on each other, but the federal government can’t make such demands of the states.
Reminds me of “Israel’s existence is illegitimate,” when this is never said of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, or Iraq, which were all established by the post-WW I mandate system. They’re either all legit, or none of them are. Same goes for the courts established by Congress; they’re either all legit (“real”) or they’re all illegitimate. The only difference between the Immigration Court and other federal courts is that their subject matter jurisdiction is highly restricted. Because they don’t try criminal cases and because deportation is not a punishment, they don’t issue “warrants,” they issue “detainers,” which perform a different function, but this does not mean that a detainer is due any less respect than a warrant issued by a so-called “real” court. Within their respective subject matter jurisdictions, they are both due the same respect because both are enforcing the laws of Congress.
Immigration “courts” are not courts at all. They’re part of the executive branch. They work for the president, and at his direction; they’re not independent of him. And by definition warrants can only be issued by courts, not by the very executive that executes them! That’s like letting the police write their own warrants!
The same is true for “Administrative Law Judges”. They’re employees of the executive branch and have nothing to do with the judicial branch.
This is why Congress can’t insulate these fake judges’ decisions from review by the real courts. Once someone has exhausted all his remedies in the administrative system, he has the unalienable right to go to a real court.
Sure, they ain’t Art III Courts. They are Courts and IMO just as valid as inferior Art III Courts. The Constitution granted Congress the power to
1. create inferior Art III Courts
2. create a uniform system of naturalization
3. create uniform system of bankruptcy
All those various Courts are inferior to SCOTUS and each derives power and their very existence from Congressional choices, actions and Congressionally imposed limits on the scope of their power. Can someone go to an Art III Court afterwards? Sure but only where Congress hasn’t limited a particular category of claim from review.
No, immigration “courts”, ALJs, the SEC’s “court”, etc., are not inferior to SCOTUS. They’re not under SCOTUS’s authority at all. They are responsible only to the president, because they work for him. Therefore they aren’t and can’t be independent of him.
And Congress can’t shield their decisions from review; once a person is done with the immigration system’s internal processes he has a constitutional right to habeas corpus before a real court. Likewise someone “convicted” by the SEC; once he’s been through that system and has exhausted his remedies there he has the inherent right to go to a real court.
Milhouse,
Don’t be obtuse. Either the rulings by Bankruptcy and Immigration Courts can be potentially reviewed by SCOTUS or they can’t. If they can then their rulings are ‘inferior’ to SCOTUS.
Congress can absolutely determine which subjects are not subject to review by Art III Courts. The INA is littered with examples. See the Tort claims act. See Anti Injuction Act. For that matter see the ‘political questions’ doctrine.
Better yet see Sec 2, Art III ‘…. shall have jurisdiction …with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make’. Seems pretty clear Congress can grant or withhold jurisdiction.
Chief, these “courts” actions can be reviewed by the courts just like those of any executive agency, if someone claims the agency has broken the law. That doesn’t make the executive branch inferior to the judicial. That is a different thing from decisions of actual courts, which can be appealed to higher courts.
Congress can say which court can hear certain kinds of cases, but it can’t insulate something from review altogether; the executive branch still has to obey the law, and if someone with standing claims to have been unlawfully harmed, particularly if someone claims to be detained unjustly, they have the absolute right to take it to some court. Habeas corpus can’t be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion, and even then only as much as is necessary for public safety.
Milhouse, there’s all.sorts of things that are entirely non justiciable by Federal Courts. Arguing that Congress can’t use it’s authority to set boundaries for Federal Courts, particularly inferior Courts, is nonsense.
In theory habeas petition can by sought …but it doesn’t have to be granted and in many instances it not applicable or available to a petitioner. For a detention or punishment? Sure! For an administrative decision or adverse ruling by Art Court? Not necessarily, especially for run of the mill cases. So some illegal alien could get a legit habeas petition hearing for a lengthy detention prior to removal order but not for the adverse removal order …at least that’s how it is supposed to/did work pre Trump, though TDS Judiciary seem to find all sorts of new theories to hang their hats on.
In sum Congress can always restrict what is/is not justiciable within their Constitutional powers. IMO we’d short circuit much of the current nonsense by TDS Judiciary with a return to strict original jurisdiction and strip inferior Federal Courts of jurisdiction they were ‘delegated/assigned’ and let SCOTUS do the increased docket if SCOTUS refuses to rein in the TDS Judiciary.
This is not true. The immigration “courts” do issue “warrants”; but they’re not real warrants. They don’t entitle those executing them to enter private property without the owner’s consent, as a real warrant does. An immigration “warrant” is simply an instruction from one member of the executive branch to another, identifying the person to be arrested. The agents don’t legally need such a “warrant”, it’s just that without one they don’t know whom they’re looking for.
A detainer is something else. It’s a polite request to a state or local jail, asking them to pretty please hold this person who is in their custody, and not release him just because he’s served his sentence, or made bail, or otherwise earned release. Please hold him, at your expense, until we get off our rear and and come to arrest him. It’s up to the state/local officials whether to agree to this request, unless state law either requires or forbids it.
A warrant is a warrant is a warrant.
Administrative warrants written by an immigration judge carry the force of law, and is someone the FEDERAL government wants. It allows them to go onto private property to remove an illegal (there’s that word again!) immigrant.
It asks the state to *hold* the person until the federal government comes and picks them up.
There is. No. Difference.
Not true at all.
That depends entirely on what you mean by “the force of law”. It’s a meaningless assertion until you define that term.
That it wants someone is legally irrelevant. A state can also want someone, but without a real warrant issued by a real judge that desire is meaningless. The federal government is no different. To make it more than simply a “want”, the federal government needs to go to a federal judge.
NO IT DOES NOT. A federal agent who forcibly enters private property on the strength of a “warrant” he wrote himself (or his boss wrote) is a criminal, which makes him worse than the alien he’s arresting.
There must be some words missing from your comment, because suddenly you’re talking about a detainer, which is a very different thing. A detainer is only ever a polite request. No one is ever required to comply with it, and Congress has no authority to make it mandatory.
I’m tired of officials picking and choosing which laws they will follow. Immigration is clearly a federal concern. States have no say. Blocking federal agents is nothing less than an insurgency. Arrest the officials and throw them into jail with an appropriate large bond. I don’t care if they have to arrest the governor, AG and every Maryland official, This has to stop for the “sake of our democracy”.
State officials are not picking or choosing anything. They are not violating any law, because Congress cannot make any law against what they’re doing. What you are proposing would be to tear up the constitution and impose federal tyranny on a state. That’s exactly what the second amendment was written to prevent.
All of which the state has the fundamental constitutional right to do.
Slaves were not illegal aliens. They were legal residents of the United States, and arguably the federal government had as little jurisdiction over slaves (runaway or not) as it had over citizens of the union member States. At the time the fugitive slave statutes were written, it was the general consensus that even if they were “contraband,” a form of self-stolen property, criminal acts (theft, robbery, murder, you name it) that occurred within or between two or more States was not considered any of the federal government’s business. This attitude did not change until decades after the Civil War and is no longer the case. It wasn’t until the Lindberg baby kidnapping and the subsequent torturing of the Commerce Clause that the federal government managed to insinuate its jurisdiction over various forms of common criminality.
All this goes to the point that the situation today does not find an analog in the reaction of some States to the fugitive slave laws. The feds never had jurisdiction over slaves, contraband or not, but they have always had jurisdiction to control the admission and deportation of aliens. They are not the same things, the arguments that held for the fugitive slave laws do not hold for resistance to, or obstruction of, immigration laws. We no longer maintain antebellum concepts concerning federal jurisdiction over criminal matters within the States. The arguments made in support of some States’ reactions to the fugitive slave statutes wouldn’t hold up today (even if they should).
The constitution explicitly required the return of fugitive slaves. That makes enforcing that clause the federal government’s business.
The constitution does not anywhere give Congress the authority to regulate immigration. That’s something the courts made up 100 years later.
Therefore the Fugitive Slave laws were more constitutional than the current immigration laws.
No federal court at the time questioned the validity of the Fugitive Slave laws. But they recognized that while states could not obstruct slave catchers, they could ban all their employees, and all local government employees, from doing anything to help them. That is all “sanctuary” jurisdictions do today.