As mass deportation efforts continue across the country, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich says law enforcement and U.S. military responses to First Amendment-protected demonstrations against those actions are “chilling.”
“[These] immigration raids followed by protests have incited an unprecedented over-the-top and unnecessary federal response,” Elrich said during a virtual media briefing Wednesday, referring to recent incidents in Los Angeles that led President Donald Trump to call in the National Guard. “Quite frankly, it could happen here.”
U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been intensifying efforts to deport immigrants across the country at Trump’s direction, including picking up migrant workers in an Italian restaurant in San Diego, detaining a high school volleyball player in Massachusetts (who has since been released) and arresting those who entered the U.S. legally at courthouses, according to Reuters.
In the county, hundreds of Montgomery Blair High School students walked out of their Silver Spring school Thursday afternoon in protest of recent actions by ICE, including the recent deportation of one of their peers, according to the Montgomery Blair Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform (FAIR) organization.
Protests against mass ICE raids in Los Angeles and the response by law enforcement have garnered headlines across the country this week for turning violent, as some demonstrators and journalists have been injured by rubber bullets and pepper spray. Hundreds of military troops have been deployed to the area.
“President Trump invoked the Insurrection Act in order to deploy the National Guard in California,” Elrich said. “These acts of civil disobedience are not insurrections. No one of these protests had the objective of overthrowing the government. Conflating the two very different actions will invariably lead to violating people’s civil rights.”
While the county hasn’t experienced such raids or protests, Montgomery County police Chief Marc Yamada said during Wednesday’s briefing that as long as all protesters are operating within the law, the county police force will protect them.
“Our commitment here is to public safety,” Yamada said. “We have a policy in place where we are content neutral. We don’t care who you are, what you’re protesting against, or who you’re protesting against, or how you do it, as long as you stay within the confines of the laws.”
County police are preparing for more than a dozen “No Kings” protests scheduled to be held through the county Saturday to counter Trump’s military parade that’s set to kick off at 6:30 p.m. in Washington, D.C.
Yamada said examples of violating the law during protests include impeding traffic, blocking public walkway access and using amplified noisemakers.
County Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Earl Stoddard noted during the briefing that he has a “good working relationship” with ICE agents responsible for the region, and there has been no active threat of a mass raid. However, he said he doesn’t anticipate there would be advanced warning if one was planned.
“My speculation would be it’s a matter of time before we see these [raids] spread across the country,” Stoddard said. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
Not a sanctuary jurisdiction
Montgomery County has never declared itself a sanctuary county, a point that Elrich has frequently repeated. According to the website for the county’s public information office, county policy is to not inquire “about anyone’s immigration status, nor does the county conduct any immigration enforcement or investigations.”
However, county policy requires the police department and the county’s Department of Correction and Rehabilitation to cooperate with ICE officials in their work on immigration and customs violations and drug and human trafficking. The county’s arrest and detention information is sent to the state and can be accessed by ICE.
“We don’t interfere with ICE activities. We never have interfered with ICE activities. We have a, I would say, positive relationship with ICE,” Elrich said during a virtual media briefing April 30.
However, the county received criticism from ICE last month after ICE detained a Gaithersburg resident who was an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador and convicted felon. ICE alleges that multiple detainer requests were sent to the county, while county officials say the error was due to clerical issues and not policy.
A list released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security named Montgomery County along with hundreds of other counties, cities and towns across the country as “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Each listed jurisdiction received formal notification of its “non-compliance with federal statutes,” according to the department. The list did not compel the jurisdictions to take any specific actions or list a specific consequence and was removed from the department’s website just days later.
Residents should be aware
Stoddard warned that while Montgomery County does not appear to be specifically facing immediate attention from ICE, immigrant residents should be aware of what is happening nationally.
“If you’re a contractor, if you’re doing landscaping, if you’re doing trash pickup and removal from a federal installation, you might expect to be stopped at this point. If you’re an Uber driver or a Lyft driver picking up someone who’s on federal property, you might expect to be engaged by federal law enforcement agents at this point,” Stoddard said. “This is a very different federal administration, and people need to understand that and think about the potential interactions that they’re going to have with the federal government.”
Yamada said county officials are not yet concerned about protests at the level of what’s being seen in Los Angeles. So far, local demonstrations against the actions of the Trump administration, including layoffs of federal workers, have been mostly peaceful.
“I’ve protested injustice throughout my life. I’ve been tear-gassed more than once, but I will always support the right to protest,” Elrich said.
