Montgomery County, Maryland, officials launched an online portal Friday allowing residents to report U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity to the county government, as the Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit against the state over its expanding sanctuary policies.
The portal, established under the county’s new County Values Act, asks residents to submit the type of alleged violation, location, time, and any photo or video evidence, with an option to report anonymously. The county lists offenses that include ICE agents wearing face coverings, operating on county-owned property, or committing assault.
The Department of Homeland Security condemned the portal in blunt terms.
“ICE tracking portals put the lives of the men and women of law enforcement in danger as they go after terrorists, vicious gangs and violent criminal rings,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told Washington’s WJLA-TV. “We will not abide by unconstitutional mask bans. The Supremacy Clause makes it clear that Maryland’s sanctuary politicians do not control federal law enforcement.”
The County Values Act, which took effect Monday, requires a judicial warrant before ICE can access nonpublic county properties and bars county-owned garages and parking lots from being used as staging areas for immigration operations. A separate law, the Unmask ICE Act, bans face coverings for all law enforcement personnel on duty in the county, including federal officers.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said at a Wednesday briefing that the laws do not prevent ICE from making arrests within permitted boundaries. “We just said you’re not doing it on our property,” he said.
County Council President Natali Fani-Gonzalez was more direct, saying the portal is meant to “ensure that we’re not assisting them in any way.”
On Thursday, one day before the portal went live, the Justice Department filed suit to block Maryland’s statewide Community Trust Act, a 2026 law that limits how state and local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Gov. Wes Moore allowed the law to take effect without his signature.
The suit alleges the law “unlawfully regulates the federal government” by requiring judicial warrants that federal immigration law does not mandate and by restricting information-sharing between local agencies and ICE. Federal law explicitly bars states from prohibiting such information-sharing with federal immigration authorities, the DOJ filing said.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement: “When sanctuary jurisdictions enact laws to shield illegal aliens from federal law enforcement, it is not merely federal law that is violated, but the voices of everyday American voters are silenced. Today’s suit proves that this Department will never stand for such lawless action from blue state leaders.”
The lawsuit cited two recent confrontations: a Worcester County Jail that refused an ICE pickup in May under the new law, and a county council member who publicly criticized the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office after it released a detainee to ICE.
Moore’s spokesperson Rhyan Lake said the governor has been clear that Maryland “will not let Donald Trump’s untrained, unqualified, and unaccountable ICE agents deputize our law enforcement officers to do immigration work.”
