An overwhelming majority of voters in Maryland support local law enforcement cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a new poll finds.
A staggering 76% of Maryland voters said they are in favor of requiring local officials to work with federal immigration authorities to detain and deport foreign nationals who have committed crimes, according to a survey released Wednesday by Annapolis-based Gonzales Research & Media. The poll — which reached 811 registered voters and holds a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5% — demonstrates the broad appeal of federal immigration enforcement across the political spectrum.
President-elect Donald Trump did not fare particularly well in the Old Line State, where he lost to Vice President Kamala Harris by a 29-point margin in the November elections, and Democrats in the state hold a 2-1 registration advantage over Republicans. Despite being a bastion for the Democratic Party, Maryland voters don’t appear to be in favor of sanctuary policies.
Maryland Republicans backed required cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE by a margin of 96%, according to the poll. More notably, 77% of independents and 65% of Democrats in the state also supported such a policy.
The poll was conducted between Dec. 27 and Jan. 4 — just days before Trump will be sworn in for a second term as the 47th president of the United States.
Following Trump’s election victory, a number of Democrat-led jurisdictions have either enacted or doubled down on sanctuary policies that restrict cooperation between police and ICE. Lawmakers in Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego County and elsewhere have all voted to either make their sanctuary laws official or reaffirm what laws they already had on the books, and other Democrat mayors have voiced open defiance to Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
These actions come despite Trump winning the presidential election in an electoral landslide after campaigning on a hardline immigration platform, and national surveys indicating that Americans have shifted right on immigration enforcement.
The immigration crisis that sprang during the Biden administration hasn’t spared Maryland. ICE agents working out of the Baltimore field office notched a record number of illegal migrant sex offender arrests in the 2024 fiscal year. State residents were also rocked with headlines in September about an MS-13 gang member wanted for murder being able to attend multiple Maryland schools before getting locked up.
The record-smashing apprehension number came despite the state being dotted with jurisdictions that restrict cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Baltimore, Baltimore County, Charles County, Howard County, Hyattsville, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Queen Anne’s County, Rockville and St. Mary’s County are all identified as “sanctuary” localities in the state, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that monitors such laws across the U.S.
The Daily Caller News Foundation was on the scene when ICE agents apprehended 21-year-old Honduran national Darwin Adonai Garcia-Garcia in July. The illegal migrant was roaming free in the local community for roughly two months since a circuit court in Prince George’s County suspended nearly his entire 30-year prison sentence for sex crimes and false imprisonment of a child.
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