Oct. 2 (UPI) — The Justice Department is suing the state of Maryland over laws passed amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown prohibiting federal law enforcement officers, including federal agents, from wearing face coverings, arguing such bans are unconstitutional.
The federal lawyers filed the lawsuit Thursday against Maryland, its attorney general, the Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission and Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. The lawsuit alleges that laws prohibiting federal law enforcement from wearing masts and requiring officers provide identification are an illegal attempt to regulate the federal government, violating the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
The Justice Department also argues that the laws threaten the safety of federal officers, who, it said in a statement, “have faced an unprecedent[ed] wave of harassment, doxing and even violence.”
“These Maryland state and local laws are a direct regulation of federal law enforcement operations and threaten severe consequences for officers and public safety alike,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said.
“The federal government, not state and local governments, gets to decide which equipment federal officers may or may not wear when performing their official duties.”
Maryland House Speaker Joseline Pena-Melnyk, a Democrat, said she is confident the state’s attorney general will defend the law.
“Marylanders have a right to know when someone exercising the extraordinary authority of law enforcement is acting under the color of law, she said in a statement.
“We stand behind the values that guided its passage: public safety, accountability and trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
The Trump administration has been leading an aggressive immigration crackdown, including high-profile operations by masked federal agents in cities to conduct mass arrests and deportations.
The Maryland General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1 in April, seeking to improve transparency of the federal government and make it easier to identify and hold accountable federal immigration agents who break the law. Montgomery County passed a similar law weeks later with Prince George’s County doing likewise in May.
Maryland lawmakers passed the bill following a winter in which federal immigration agents flooded some cities, conducting arrests and other actions critics said were illegal, including fatally shooting two U.S. citizens amid protests.
Several other states have also passed such laws in response to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, attracting federal lawsuits. Maryland is now the eighth state the Justice Department has sued over what it describes as attempts to regulate federal agents.
Montgomery County Councilmember William Jawando said they will defend the county’s Unmask ICE Act, calling it a lawful exercise of the county’s authority to protect public safety within its borders.
“Montgomery County residents deserve to know who is acting in the name of the government,” he said in a statement.
“Those who wield the authority of government must be willing to identify themselves to the people they serve. Montgomery will continue to stand for the safety and rights of every resident.”
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