Even as ICE has refocused its enforcement efforts on “the worst of the worst” since President Trump sent “Border Czar” Tom Homan to Minneapolis in late January, congressional Democrats and “sanctuary” jurisdictions have become even more intransigent in their efforts to protect criminal aliens, including and especially some serious bad actors. Whether they realize it or not, they’ve created their own conundrum with policies premised on principles that harken back to the Spanish Civil War.
Sanctuary Jurisdictions
The Center defines “sanctuary jurisdictions” as:
cities, counties, and states have laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.
Since the Center first defined the term, sanctuaries have expanded their sanctuary policies to include “anti-masking” proposals that (explicitly or implicitly) target ICE officers, “ICE-free zones” on local-government property, and (allegedly) barring local cops from providing aid to immigration officers, even to restore public order.
Like free ice cream for a five-year-old or a keg party for a fraternity boy, even “too much” opposition to immigration enforcement is never enough for some sanctuary politicos, as they race each other for new and inventive ways to demonstrate that in their burgs, “no human being is illegal”.
For proof, look no further than two neighboring jurisdictions, Fairfax County, Va., and the state of Maryland, political entities that orbit the seat of federal power in an area often called the “National Capital Region” or colloquially the “DMV” (for D.C. and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs).
The State of Maryland Bans 287(g)
On February 17, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed an “emergency bill”, the purpose of which is (in the governor’s words) “to prohibit State and local jurisdictions from deputizing officers for federal civil immigration enforcement activity” under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
As Moore stated: “In Maryland, we defend Constitutional rights and Constitutional policing — and we will not allow untrained, unqualified, and unaccountable ICE agents to deputize our law enforcement officers.”
My colleague Jessica Vaughan has explained that such 287(g) programs help localities “rid their communities of illegal aliens who commit other major and minor crimes, which saves on criminal justice costs, not to mention social services, education and health care costs, and improves the quality of life for all".
In Florida, as I noted in November, 287(g) officers helped ICE arrest some 150 sex offenders as part of “Operation Dirt Bag”, and that same month DHS announced it was working with its 287(g) partners nationwide to find thousands of missing alien kids who were released into the United States under the last administration and subsequently disappeared.
Those seem like noble efforts, but Moore’s statement suggests ICE was dragooning state and local cops into immigration enforcement, and thus it was appropriate for the government of the Free State to take a stand against unconstitutional “commandeering”.
Except that wasn’t the case.
At the time the governor signed that bill, eight of Maryland’s 23 counties had willingly joined into 287(g) partnerships with ICE (Allegany, Carroll, Cecil, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Washington, and St. Mary's), and the sheriffs in those counties — all of whom are locally elected officials — are none too happy to see them go, with some vowing to continue working with the agency or potentially sue.
So why did the (heavily Democratic) Maryland legislature pass and governor sign that bill, aside from defending some vague and poorly explained “constitutional” prerogatives? As Moore stated: “Maryland is a community of immigrants, and that’s one of our greatest strengths because this country is incomplete without each and every one of us.”
“Each and every one of us”, by definition, includes alien criminals like Filiberto Gonzalez Gutierrez, who came illegally from Mexico and is charged with attempted murder for slicing “his wife’s neck open with a box cutter”; Vladimir Herrera-Garcia, who after arriving illegally from El Salvador was convicted for homicide and larceny; and Jose Rivera Medrano, another illegal Salvadoran with convictions for incest with a minor and “sex offense against child-fondling”.
It also includes Nilo Herrera Sanchez, “a criminal illegal alien from Peru” with convictions for “strongarm rape, sex assault, sex offense, and rape with weapon”.
All were arrested by ICE in Maryland under policies that permitted cooperation between local authorities and immigration officers, but DHS complains “safe arrests like these are now outlawed because” Moore “signed a law banning cooperation with ICE”.
As a native Marylander, sanctimonious contentions that my birth state is “is incomplete without each and every” alien rapist, murderer, child sex offender, and wife slasher is part of the reason why the place must now be feeling incomplete without me.
Fairfax County, Va.
Virginia, however, looked at what was happening across the Potomac and said “hold my hoppy IPA”.
On the evening of February 23, Abdul Jalloh allegedly stabbed Stephanie Minter multiple times in the upper body at a bus stop in the Fairfax County suburb of Hybla Valley, killing her.
DHS describes Jalloh, a national of the West African country of Sierra Leone, as “a career criminal illegal alien with more than 30 arrests”, and to make the situation even worse, local cops purportedly warned prosecutors prior to Minter’s killing that he would “maliciously wound (or worse)” someone again if he were allowed to remain free after he was “released from jail after serving time for a probation violation”.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) hasn’t expressly claimed the commonwealth would be “incomplete without” Jalloh, but she did tell ICE officers they would need a “judicial warrant” if they wanted to take custody of him.
In response to that demand, DHS issued the following tweet:
Sanctuary @GovernorVA is fighting to protect a MURDERER over American citizens. This monster is responsible for fatally stabbing Stephanie Minter.
ICE does NOT need judicial warrants to make arrests.
The heroes of ICE will continue to arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens… https://t.co/t3Hprgxh8E— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) March 3, 2026
¡No Pasarán!
During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, left-wing “Republican” forces adopted the slogan ¡No pasarán! as a cry of resistance to the right-wing “Nationalists” headed by Gen. Francisco Franco.
It’s Spanish for “They shall not pass” and was coined by communist leader Dolores Ibárruri to rally Republican forces against surrendering territory to the other side, with the understanding that any concession would be fatal to their cause.
Sanctuary policies adopted and advanced by state honchos like Moore and Spanberger are premised on the same principle: helping ICE take custody of any alien — regardless of the crimes that alien committed or the potential danger to the community the alien’s continued presence poses — fatally undermines their resistance to civil immigration enforcement.
Want proof? Consider the following excerpt from a February 6 editorial in the influential (and left-leaning) Chicago Tribune:
[W]e wonder ... if Democratic legislators in Springfield would take it upon themselves in this session to debate and pass changes to the [sanctuary] Trust Act that, for example, would allow the Illinois Department of Corrections to notify ICE when an undocumented violent criminal is to be released in order to potentially get that person deported, following due process on their immigration case.
For our part, it seems obvious — and something that the overwhelming of residents of this blue state would support — that a law barring state and local law enforcement from cooperating to deport convicted violent criminals in this country illegally should be amended to allow for that. And do so without going through the bureaucratic hoops of obtaining a judicial warrant.
Understand — the editorial board at the Tribune was merely suggesting that an amendment to the state’s sanctuary policy to allow ICE to take custody of “violent criminals” in Illinois state custody was an “obvious” concession leaders in Springfield could make to DHS, but it had to do so in a borderline treacly manner (“we wonder”) to make it even a little bit politically palatable.
That’s the kind of language I used when I was 16 and asking my parents if I could drive three hours away on my learner’s permit with my friends for a week, but it wasn’t enough to wheedle or cajole the state’s governor, J.B. Pritzker (D), to budge an inch.
Instead, Pritzker is pushing a post-Trump “Project 2029” agenda, in which a Democratic administration would “restore the rule of law, and that means holding people accountable who’ve broken the law. I’m talking about the people in this administration who’ve broken the law and federal agents who’ve broken the law” — an implicit threat to ICE officers.
The problem with a ¡No pasarán! strategy is that it offers no possibility for the compromises our democratic system relies upon, which explains why congressional Democrats have refused to fund DHS for the past five weeks in protest of ICE enforcement (even as the White House offers concessions) and leads to ludicrous claims that deporting rapists would leave our country “incomplete”.
Call the Sanctuary Bluff
Spanberger may be “a former federal law enforcement officer who conducted joint search and arrest warrants alongside state and local officers”, but as I have explained elsewhere, ICE doesn’t need, and cannot secure, a “judicial warrant” to take custody of any individual removable alien.
That said, back in January 2016, my colleague Dan Cadman explained how immigration officers can secure so-called “Blackie’s warrants” at sanctuary jails to take custody of wanted criminal aliens.
Blackie’s warrants are judicially issued civil demands to enter spaces closed to the public, premised on probable cause that removable aliens can be found therein.
Up to this point, immigration officers have only used them in the context of “worksite enforcement”, but DHS certainly has probable cause to believe at least one removable alien is being sheltered in the Fairfax County lock-up, and officers are likely to find a whole lot of others while they are there.
ICE is likely reluctant to take that step in Jalloh’s case for fear it would create a precedent (Blackie’s warrants are notoriously time consuming to obtain), but it would also send a message to sanctuary communities.
The bigger the sanctuary and the more capacious its detention facility, the more criminal alien arrests that would follow; if the administration could avoid bombast in carrying out such a plan, it will likely generate press that would underscore how sensible and popular criminal alien deportations can be.
Compromise, Already
When even the Chicago Tribune concedes the community would be safer with “violent criminals” out of the country, it’s time sanctuary leaders look at the price of their sanctimony and at least talk to DHS. And Maryland might be “incomplete” without alien criminals, but that’s a risk its citizens are likely willing to take.