One year after they watched their main initiative die in the waning minutes of the 2025 legislative session, immigration advocates watched Monday night as several of their bills won last-minute victories.
The Senate voted 32-15 Monday to accept House changes to Senate Bill 791 that include making it an emergency bill, to take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature, instead of on Oct. 1. The bill aims to further limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement by state and local agencies.
Lawmakers also gave final approval to bills that make it a civil violation for law enforcement officers to wear masks in most cases in the course of their duties, and another to prevent personal data from being released to immigration agencies.
SB 791, the Community Trust Act, completed a remarkable five-day run that began Thursday night when the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee approved the bill, that had been languishing in the committee. It was pushed through the Senate Friday, amended by the House in a marathon Saturday session and sent back to the Senate, which accepted the House amendments and sent it to the governor for his signature.
Two Democrats – Sens. Carl Jackson (D-Baltimore County) and Mary-Dulany James (D-Harford) – joined all 13 Republicans to vote against the measure, but it still had more than the three-fifths needed – 29 votes in the 47-member Senate – to pass as an emergency bill.
The vote comes less than a week after the immigrant advocacy group We Are CASA led a vocal rally outside the State House Wednesday, demanding the legislature pass the Community Trust Act. Staff and members of CASA, including Executive Director George Escobar, traveled to Annapolis every day, including for Saturday’s day-long House session, to ensure the bill passed both chambers.
“The Community Trust Act is so important because this definitively limits the type of illegal collaboration that has really amplified the worst that this Trump administration has tried to roll out,” Escobar said Monday after the Senate’s vote
“We’re confident now with the passage that we can contain the damage, and then now our community can feel like … they can trust law enforcement, they can trust their local jurisdiction or local government offices,” he said.
But Senate Republicans criticized the bill for about 40 minutes before the final vote. Many were like Sen. Johnny Mautz (R-Middle Shore) who called it “a bad bill. It is a threat to public safety,”
But supporters say the bill will close a loophole in current law that lets local law enforcement agencies and jails detain individuals based on their immigration status and requests from ICE. Supporters have said the Community Trust Act complements legislation signed into law earlier this year that bans the so-called 287(g) agreements between ICE and local law enforcement agencies.
In the bill approved Monday, the person who would be detained for ICE in a local or state correctional facility under four scenarios: If a person was convicted of a felony in the United States, is a registered sex offender, served between 12 to 18 months in a state prison, or committed an offense in another state and served at least five years in prison.
The bill requires federal officials to present a judicial warrant to hold someone, not just the administrative warrants they can currently use.
Sen. Jack Bailey (R-Calvert and St. Mary’s) repeated arguments similar to those raised last week, in which he waid the measure would decrease cooperation between local law enforcement and federal agencies working together to deter crime.
Bailey asked Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), the Judicial Proceedings chair and floor manager Monday for the Community Trust Act, to respond to some of his concerns.
Smith said the only substantive change since last week is that the bill is now an emergency measure.
“I’m happy to stand for questions, but I do not want to get into a rehashing of arguments that we debated for four hours … on Friday,” he said.
Sen. Chris West (R-Baltimore and Carroll) didn’t have a question, but said the measure got rushed through without significant thought on the consequences.
West, who serves on the Judicial Proceedings Committee, reiterated his point Monday that the measure would disband all state and local joint task forces based on this provision: A law enforcement agent may not “provide federal immigration authorities with information about an individual obtained in the course of the law enforcement agent’s duties.”
“That is what we will doing, and the reason we’re doing it is because we passed this bill on the fly,” West said. “This is the kind of legislation which our committee works hard on in order to iron out the bugs. This is most emphatically a bug.”