County Immigration Enforcement in the Context of Unsettled Federalism: From Obama to Trump

• Published date: 01 June 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X231155946
• Author: Gary M. Reich,Michael C. Scott
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Original Research General Interest Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X231155946

State and Local Government Review

2023, Vol. 55(2) 96 –119

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X231155946

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Original Research General Interest Article

Introduction

For an immigrant living in the United States

without authorization, a trip across a county line

can be life altering. To cite an example: Over the

past decade Montgomery County and Frederick

County, adjacent jurisdictions in Maryland,

adopted opposing policies regarding coopera-

tion with federal immigration enforcement and

removal operations. Law enforcement agencies

in Montgomery County limited their coopera-

tion with requests from Immigration and

Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain individu-

als, earning the county a 2017 designation from

ICE as one of the ten “least cooperative” coun-

ties in the country (Nelson 2019). By contrast,

an ACLU report cited neighboring Frederick

County as one of the country’s least hospitable

counties for immigrants. Since 2008 its sheriff,

Chuck Jenkins, has partnered with ICE to check

the immigration status of all detainees held in

the county jail and the sheriff routinely acqui-

esces to requests from ICE to detain and transfer

immigrants. In 2020, some 88% of immigrant

detainees transferred to ICE from Frederick

County were arrested for civil misdemeanors—

mostly traffic violations—in which the detainee

1155946SLGXXX10.1177/0160323X231155946State and Local Government ReviewReich and Scott

research-article2023

1Department of Political Science, University of Kansas,

Lawrence, KS, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gary M. Reich, Department of Political Science, University

of Kansas, 414 Blake, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.

Email: greich@ku.edu

County Immigration

Enforcement in the Context of

Unsettled Federalism: From

Obama to Trump

Gary M. Reich1 and Michael C. Scott1

Abstract

We examine patterns of county participation in immigration enforcement across the Obama and

Trump administrations and responses to the Trump administration’s efforts to mandate local

compliance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directives. We focus on the policy

that directly speaks to local discretion in enforcing federal law—namely, the willingness of local

officials to render immigrant detainees to ICE. We find that underlying patterns of detainee transfers

from counties to ICE were largely consistent between the Obama and Trump administrations.

Nonetheless, the rate of detainee transfers increased during the Trump administration, an outcome

associated with county support for Trump in the 2016 election. The findings suggest that partisanship

is an entrenched source of diverging county enforcement practices, increasing intergovernmental

conflict and undermining the “steam valve” potential of immigration federalism.

Keywords

immigration policy, federalism, immigration federalism, immigrant detention, ICE detainers,

sanctuary cities, detainer compliance, detainer refusals, ICE IGSA, Trump sanctuary cities

Reich and Scott 97

had no previous criminal warrant or conviction

(ACLU Maryland 2020).

The contrasting policies of these neighboring

counties illustrates the patchwork of enforce-

ment protocols across U.S. localities today. For

an immigrant detained by local authorities, city

and county immigration enforcement practices

can mean the difference between resuming their

life in the United States versus being deported.

By 2019, local policy experimentation helped

drive a 10-fold difference across states in the

likelihood of an unauthorized immigrant being

deported, with deportation rates lowest in coun-

ties that explicitly limit cooperation with ICE

(Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse,

Syracuse University [TRAC] 2019a).

The enforcement directives emanating from

the federal government, and the role of state and

local authorities in helping to carry out those

directives, are front and center in national politi-

cal debates. From politicians promising to round

up and deport unauthorized migrants to those

calling for Congress to abolish Immigration

and Customs Enforcement (ICE), approaches

toward enforcement have increasingly polar-

ized along pa rty lines. The transition from the

Obama to Trump administrations marked a new

stage in the evolution of local participation in

the pola rized a rena of immigration enforcement.

The Obama administration ramped up local

involvement in enforcement under the Secure

Communities program in the period 2009–2014.

However, between 2014 and 2016 it scaled back

the scope of arrest targets and state/loc al involve-

ment under the Priority Enforcement Program

(PEP), which shifted enforcement toward immi-

grants convicted of criminal offenses and those

crossing the border illegally. The inauguration

of Donald Trump marked another policy rever-

sal, with the administration issuing new guide-

lines that targeted virtually every unauthorized

immigrant in the country for arrest (Kopan

2017). The Trump administration revived the

Secure Communities program and pressured

localities to cooperate with requests to detain

immigrants on behalf of ICE. Arrests of immi-

grants in the interior of the U.S. soared in the

first year of the Trump administration and, com-

pared to the final two years of the Obama

administration, included a larger proportion of

detainees with no previous criminal conviction

or outstanding warrant (Gramlich 2020).

The concurrence of enhanced autonomy

over immigration enforcement at the local

level alongside changing federal enforcement

directives is now a defining characteristic of

immigration federalism and informs the two

questions animating this paper. First, across

the Obama and Trump administrations, which

factors explain county cooperation with ICE

in terms of r endering detained immigrants to

federal authorities? Second, with the Trump

administration’s effort to mandate local com-

pliance with its enforcement objectives, what

determined local response to changing federal

directives? We compare county transfers of

detained immigrants in 2015–2016 versus

2017–2018 to understand diverging patterns

of local involvement in immigration enforce-

ment and responsiveness to changing federal

directives. Focusing on immigrants transferred

to ICE from county detention facilities allows

us to zero in on the discretionary authority of

local officials that most dramatically affects

unauthorized immigrants and their families—

namely, the likelihood that an encounter with

local law enforcement will result in federal

detention and deportation.

We find that the factors associated with

detainee transfers from local authorities to ICE

were largely unchanged across both the Obama

and Trump administrations, reflecting a combi-

nation of county partisanship, race/ethnicity,

and federal resources to support local enforce-

ment. At least in terms of detainee transfers, the

Trump administration was not able to funda-

mentally alter the forces driving county collabo-

ration with ICE. Nonetheless, the rate of county

detainee transfers increased in the first two

years of the Trump administration. We find that

the increase in detainee transfers was largely

driven by counties that voted more heavily for

Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election,

indicative of a growing partisan polarization in

immigration enforcement.

The findings extend existing research on

the sources of local involvement in immigra-

tion enforcement while shedding light on

local responses to policy change following an

inter-party transition of executive authority.