Why Maryland law can’t always keep ICE off school grounds

Maryland’s elected officials hoped to prevent exactly the kind of scenario that played out last week on the grounds of a Baltimore school. They passed a number of bills in the past two years aimed at keeping federal immigration officers out of places deemed safe havens.

But the limits on their power became clear when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained two parents during morning drop-off at Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School on Thursday. Exceptions in state law allow federal agents to come to schools in certain emergency circumstances, including when pursuing a suspect, which ICE says occurred last week. Local and school officials are investigating the incident and determining potential recourse.

The Maryland Department of Education, the Maryland attorney general and the governor’s office all declined to comment on how Maryland laws apply to this incident.

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson said next steps include reviewing footage of the incident, but he’s open to the state suing: “Nobody’s above the law,” he said.

“It seems totally abhorrent to me that any law enforcement agent would think it ever appropriate to pursue, for any reason, somebody coming onto school grounds and traumatizing kids,” Ferguson said.

Early last year, President Donald Trump’s administration tossed a long-standing policy that kept immigration enforcement activities from happening in protected spaces like schools, churches and daycare centers.

The Maryland State Department of Education quickly issued guidance for schools, advising them to consult their lawyers, protect student privacy and keep families informed if ICE paid them a visit.

In 2025, the Maryland General Assembly passed a law saying that public schools should deny ICE agents access to their property unless the agents have a judicial warrant signed by a federal judge or in an emergency. The law required the attorney general’s office to write guidance on protected locations for local agencies.

“Obviously, the intent of the law was to create safe and secure spaces without the fear of being interfered by federal immigration agents,” said Sen. Will Smith, a Democrat representing Montgomery County, who sponsored the 2025 law.

State guidance says ICE rarely has to give schools a heads-up and notes that state policy “does not bind” federal law enforcement officers. In other words, the state can tell its employees how to handle ICE, but it can’t keep federal agents from enforcing laws as they see fit.

In 2026, emergency legislation limited the help that local officials can provide to ICE. That law, which has already taken effect, added bus stops to the areas that are off-limits to ICE enforcement.

“Maryland lawmakers this spring drew a clear line that schools are sensitive locations,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that supports immigrants and refugees. “What happened at Commodore John Rodgers is exactly the kind of drama those protections were written to protect.”

Last week, federal immigration agents followed Jesus Acevedo Sanchez into a city school driveway, where video shows agents wrestling him to the ground and detaining both him and his wife, Adriana Gavilan Sanchez. One of the couple’s children screamed from the car.

Thursday’s incident was the first reported case of ICE detaining someone on Maryland public school property since Trump retook office. ICE has said such actions should be “extremely rare,” and less fewer than 20 such incidents, including Baltimore’s, have been documented on school property since last April, according to an online tracker.

How much control a state can exert over federal agents is up to the courts, Smith and others said. The Trump administration is suing states that have tried to impose rules on ICE agents, such as banning them from wearing masks or using property owned by local governments (including private areas) for enforcement activities.

Ferguson said Maryland’s No Kings Act, which allows any Marylander to sue federal officials who violate their constitutional rights “under color of law” starting Oct. 1, would give state courts jurisdiction over these questions, not just federal ones.

There are limits to what state law can prohibit, said Ama Frimpong, chief of services at We Are CASA, an immigrant rights organization. But she said Maryland should look into whether its current laws are as strong as legally allowed and should be “pushing those protections to the greatest limits possible” to “ensure that this does not happen again.”

The courts have already pushed back on state attempts to limit ICE. A federal appeals court blocked a 2025 California law requiring that agents wear some form of identification after the federal government said the law would threaten officers’ safety and “violated the constitution because the state was directly seeking to regulate the federal government,” according to the Associated Press.

Maryland guidance says federal law enforcement officials can enter school property when there are exigent circumstances, meaning emergencies that bypass the need for a warrant, or when they’re already pursuing a suspect.

ICE claimed Acevedo Sanchez “refused lawful command, violently resisted arrest, and used his vehicle to evade law enforcement, dragging an ICE officer in the process,” according to a Friday statement from Lauren Bis, an acting assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. Acevedo Sanchez then fled to Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School, where he was detained, according to ICE’s account.

Acevedo Sanchez’s lawyer said in court documents that he and his wife were on their way to drop their children off at school “when their vehicle was hit in the rear and side by two ICE vehicles.”

Ferguson said that while he doubts ICE agents were in “hot pursuit,” if they were, it would be a theoretical exception to state law.

Baltimore City Public Schools officials, along with city and state leaders, have called on ICE to commit to staying off school property. The American Federation of Teachers, a national union for educators, said it filed an emergency motion to stop ICE from operating in and around schools.

City Solicitor Ebony Thompson said Thursday afternoon that legislation recently passed by the City Council preventing city agencies from coordinating with federal immigration officials does not apply “to an unauthorized and uninvited incursion onto City property, which this appears to have been.”

Several city council members signed on to a statement last Friday, saying that they were coordinating with the school system “to pursue every avenue available to us.”

“Attacks like this on families in our community demonstrate that federal immigration enforcement takes place in our city and our state with relative impunity,” said Baltimore City Council member Mark Parker hours after the incident. “The laws, regulations and accountability structures meant to ensure constitutional and safe policing are completely in the hands of the federal government.”

Banner reporter Ellie Wolfe contributed to this story.

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This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.