Two bills that would limit Maryland’s role in immigration enforcement get final push by advocates

ANNAPOLIS — With just five days to go in the Maryland legislative session, advocates for immigrants are pushing hard for the state Senate to approve two bills: one would require warrants for federal immigration enforcement agents to obtain information from state databases and the other would prohibit state and local governments from being in the business of immigration detention.

The bills have both been approved by the House of Delegates, but as of April 7 they were being held in the Maryland Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee.

At a small rally for advocates held April 7 at Lawyer’s Mall, adjacent to the Statehouse in Annapolis, several immigrants told their stories of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under contracts with Maryland detention centers under conditions they described as “horrible” and “inhumane.”

Maria Brito, a Guatemalan who wore a traditional intricately stitched “huipile,” spoke vehemently about her dehumanizing experience of immigration detention and begged the Maryland legislators to hear her and the other speakers.

“I came to this country to find refuge,” not to experience further suffering in detention, Brito said. She is awaiting the adjudication of her petition for asylum, based upon having her life threatened in Guatemala. The Woodlawn resident has been in the United States for three years, she said.

Legislative backers of the two bills also spoke. Del. Vaughn M. Stewart III, who represents District 19 in the Aspen Hill/Glenmont area of Montgomery County, said H.B. 16, which he sponsored, would get Maryland out of the business of enabling the federal government to mistreat detainees. He said three Maryland detention centers that have contracts to house immigration detainees had been cited by the Department of Homeland Security for failing to meet health and safety standards. He said those violations included worm-infested food and unnecessary body cavity searches as part of the “human misery” to which immigrants are exposed in detention. The Maryland Catholic Conference submitted testimony in support of that bill.

In advocating for a second bill, one immigrant speaker told of being turned over to ICE by officers of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, after they encountered him helping his uncle take down a tree on his property. The tree had been ordered removed as posing a hazard.

Jose Villalta, an immigrant from El Salvador, said he was jailed in Frederick County for nearly six months after Department of Natural Resources officers came to his uncle’s home in Rockville while they were working to remove a tree. Although his uncle had the proper paperwork for the tree’s removal, the agents asked for and were given Villalta’s driver’s license. After Villalta acknowledged he didn’t have a state license for tree removal, the officers wrote him a ticket for the violation within minutes after arriving, he said.

However, the officers ran his information through an ICE database and saw he had an outstanding deportation order, known as a detainer or administrative warrant. Although the state agency has no responsibility for enforcing federal immigration laws, the officers held him for two hours until ICE agents could arrive.

“The DNR had no reason to hold me,” Villalta told the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington. “It’s not their job to hold people for ICE.” Villalta ultimately sued the Department of Natural Resources. Meanwhile, he is awaiting the resolution of his third appeal of denials of his petition to remain in the United States. He said a hearing is scheduled for August.

H.B. 23, known as the Driver Privacy Act, would, among other provisions, prohibit state and local government authorities from disclosing personal information – such as the address or location of someone in the government database — to federal authorities for the purpose of immigration enforcement, unless presented with a state or federal court warrant.  

Del. Wanika Fisher, who represents District 47B in the Langley Park/Hyattsville area of Prince George’s County that has a large immigrant population, described herself as “a child of immigrants,” and noted that her family includes members with mixed immigration status (usually used to describe households with some undocumented members, some U.S. citizens and some legal residents). A former prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney, Fisher said the current laws allowing government agencies to share information freely with ICE is a significant deterrent to those who could report crimes.

“Witnesses are afraid to come forward, she said.

Matt Hornbeck, principal of Hampstead Hill Academy, a Baltimore pre-K through middle school with an enrollment of about half children of immigrants, talked of the educational and emotional effects on students of having their parents detained by immigration agents.

“I’m reminded of one brilliant eighth grader,” whose future seemed on track for a great life, he said. But after her father was detained, the family’s finances became unstable, their housing situation was precarious and the girl’s academics suffered.

This story first appeared in The Catholic Standard.

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