The Feds Are Suing Maryland Over the Community Trust Act. Here’s What That Law Actually Does.
The DOJ says Maryland can't tell local police to hang up on ICE. Maryland says the Constitution backs it up, and seventeen sheriffs are suing too.
On July 10, the U.S. Department of Justice walked into federal court in Baltimore and sued the entire state of Maryland. Not a city. Not a county. The whole state, along with Attorney General Anthony Brown by name.
The target was a law most Marylanders had never heard of a few months ago: the Community Trust Act. It took effect in May after ten years of advocates pushing for it, and it limits how much your local sheriff's office can do on behalf of ICE.
That might sound like a technical fight over paperwork between two governments. It's not. It's about who gets to decide what happens inside a Maryland county jail: Washington, or Annapolis.
FIRST: WHAT IS AN ICE "DETAINER REQUEST," AND WHY ISN'T IT A WARRANT?
Here's the piece of the story most coverage skips. When ICE wants a local jail to hold someone past their release date, it usually doesn't show up with a warrant signed by a judge. It sends what's called a "detainer request," basically a form asking the jail to keep someone for up to 48 extra hours so ICE has time to pick them up.
Courts, including federal ones, have said the same thing about detainer requests: they're a request, not an order. States and cities aren't required to honor them. The Community Trust Act is Maryland's decision, spelled out in law, about when it will.
WHAT HAPPENED
The Community Trust Act, sponsored by Delegate N. Scott Phillips and championed by immigrant rights groups including the ACLU of Maryland and CASA, passed the General Assembly this spring after a marathon House session in April. Governor Wes Moore let it become law without his signature on May 31, citing "real implementation challenges" even as he declined to veto it. Because lawmakers made it an emergency measure, it took effect immediately instead of waiting until October.
The law does two main things. It bars local law enforcement from asking about someone's immigration status in most routine encounters, and it says local police can only notify ICE or hold someone at ICE's request in narrow circumstances: if the person has been convicted of a felony, sentenced to at least a year in a Maryland facility, required to register as a sex offender, or has served at least five years in another state's prison system.
Two lawsuits followed. In May, a group of Maryland sheriffs representing a majority of the state's 24 counties sued to block the law, arguing it forces them into "harboring criminal offenders." Then on July 10, the DOJ filed its own 26-page complaint in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, naming the state and AG Brown as defendants and arguing the law violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause by obstructing federal immigration enforcement.
WHAT SUPPORTERS OF THE COMMUNITY TRUST ACT SAY
Attorney General Brown, who has to defend the law in court, argues the Act doesn't stop ICE from doing anything. Federal agents can still operate anywhere in Maryland. What the law controls is how Maryland's own state and local resources get used. "The Constitution does not let the federal government compel states to carry out federal immigration enforcement," Brown said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed. His office has since issued formal guidance telling local police departments exactly what the law does and doesn't require of them.
Delegate Phillips, the bill's sponsor and chair of Maryland's Legislative Black Caucus, has framed the law as a public safety measure, not just an immigration one. His argument: when immigrant residents are afraid that calling 911 or reporting a crime could get a family member deported, they stop calling, and everyone in the neighborhood is less safe as a result. Immigrant rights groups like CASA and the ACLU of Maryland, who spent a decade pushing for the bill, say it simply draws a line local police already had the legal right to draw.
WHAT THE LAWSUITS SAY
The DOJ's complaint argues Maryland is engaged in what it calls an "active and deliberate effort" to obstruct deportations, and that state law can't override federal authority over immigration when the two conflict. It's one of more than 20 similar lawsuits DOJ has filed against states and cities since February 2025, when the Attorney General directed the department's civil division to target so-called sanctuary policies nationwide, including suits against Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and New York.
The sheriffs' lawsuit makes a narrower, more local argument: that the law puts county law enforcement in an impossible position, legally barred from cooperating with federal agents even when they believe someone in custody poses a public safety risk. Several sheriffs have said the DOJ suit, filed weeks after theirs, confirms the concerns they raised first.
WHAT WE DON'T KNOW YET
Neither lawsuit has been decided. No hearing date has been set in the DOJ's case as of early August, and it's unclear whether the two suits will be heard together or separately. Legal observers expect this to eventually turn on the same anti-commandeering principle the Supreme Court has used before to say the federal government can't force state officials to carry out federal programs, but how a court applies that here, and how fast, is still an open question. Whatever a federal judge in Baltimore decides is also likely to be appealed, so this is a story that will play out over months, not weeks.
Go straight to the source: read Attorney General Brown's official statement and guidance on the Community Trust Act.
Read AG Brown's StatementWHAT YOU CAN DO
- Read Attorney General Brown's official guidance on what the Community Trust Act does and doesn't require of local police, so you're working from the actual text instead of secondhand takes.
- Call or write your county sheriff's office and ask directly where they stand: are they part of the sheriffs' lawsuit, and if so, why.
- Contact your state senator or delegate and tell them whether you want them to defend the law as written if the legislature revisits it this session.
