A top Maryland Democrat said that Republicans are disingenuous in their call for Gov. Wes Moore to order local jurisdictions to coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to turn in people unlawfully in the U.S. who have been convicted of a violent crime.

“I’m not aware of Maryland law prohibiting counties from engaging in exactly this kind of participation, and, in fact, when we left this topic we kind of left it to the counties to have a lot more discretion than I think some of the members on both sides of the aisle wanted,” Maryland House Majority Leader David Moon, a Montgomery County Democrat, said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday.

Tuesday, Republican Dels. Matt Morgan of St. Mary’s County; Ryan Nawrocki, Kathy Szeliga and Robin Grammer of Baltimore County; Mark Fisher of Calvert County; Nic Kipke and Brian Chisholm of Anne Arundel County; and Lauren Arikan of Harford County — collectively known as the House Freedom Caucus — issued a press release calling on Moore, a Democrat, to issue an executive order requiring local law enforcement honor active ICE detainers before releasing people convicted of violent crimes who are unlawfully in the U.S. from detention.

Moore’s office declined to answer a question on the topic Wednesday, and referred to a statement spokesman Carter Elliott IV issued Tuesday:

“Ensuring public safety has been and continues to be the Moore-Miller Administration’s highest priority. The governor is committed to upholding the law all while ensuring due process and protecting the rights of all individuals,” Moore spokesman Carter Elliott IV said in a statement. “The administration will continue to work in partnership with federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to address criminal behavior effectively and responsibly, while respecting legal and procedural guidelines.”

In an interview with Baltimore Sun co-owner Armstrong Williams in July, Moore said “the relationship between ICE and states is really a relationship between ICE and towns and cities.”

“No governor is in charge of immigration policy,” he said. “We deal with the consequences of the fact that there is a broken federal immigration system.”

In 2021, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation largely along party lines to prohibit counties from entering into agreements with ICE to detain immigrants for immigration-related offenses on its behalf.

Former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, vetoed the bill. His veto was overridden — again, along party lines — during a special legislative session in December 2021.

Republicans Tuesday called this policy an “anti-ICE, pro-open borders bill.”

According to Moon, immigrant rights advocates wanted the legislature to go further, calling on them to prohibit jurisdictions from entering into agreements with ICE that would allow the agency to delegate the authority to local law enforcement to perform specific immigration officer functions under its oversight. Lawmakers declined to touch that policy.

Moon said that the purpose of the law was to ensure that Maryland county jails don’t become “for-profit prisons” to detain people on ICE’s behalf.

“That was a very different policy than what is being discussed today, which is about whether counties and local governments should be holding people longer than their sentences in order for ICE to pick them up,” he said.

Several jurisdictions, including Baltimore City and Montgomery and Baltimore counties, currently honor ICE detainers for violent offenders to varying degrees. Moon said the decision is up to each county, and that there isn’t a “hard rule” as to whether or not jurisdictions can or cannot coordinate with ICE.

“It seems a little disingenuous for the Freedom Caucus to be complaining about the current state-of-pay of ICE and Maryland government relations,” he said. “We actually have multiple major counties — just within the last few months — announce new agreements with ICE.”

“But, to the extent that there are non-violent offenders in the mix, we do stand by those policies that attempted to put some constitutional protections and due process protections into the mix,” he continued.

Renewed interest in the topic of immigration policy has appeared in Maryland following the August 2023 death of Rachel Morin, who was killed on a Harford County walking trail. The man accused of killing her, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, unlawfully entered the country four times. He is alleged to have killed another woman in El Salvador.

For Morin’s death, Martinez-Hernandez has been charged with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape and first- and second-degree assault.

Morin’s mother, Patty, testified before congress for a second time Wednesday, saying people who live in “sanctuary states” are in danger.

“They say that the borders are safe,” she said Wednesday. “We live 1,800 miles away from the southern border. They’re not safe.”

In his July interview with Williams, Moore said his “heart broke” for Morin, and that violence isn’t tolerated in the state of Maryland — regardless of the status of whoever perpetrates it.

Moon said this renewed call for an executive order from Moore on behalf of Republicans is consistent with a pattern of using “histrionics” when certain events happen to push for criminal justice policy changes, and that these discussions about immigration law have been debated in Maryland for years.

“Is this political?” he asked. “Well, that’s the business we’re in.”