What state and local ordinances or policies have been enacted to restrict local cooperation with ICE searches and entries?
Executive summary
A patchwork of state and local laws, ordinances, and administrative policies now restrict cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in ways that range from formal bans on honoring civil immigration detainers to local “sanctuary” rules that deny ICE routine access to jails and certain public spaces; these measures have been adopted unevenly across jurisdictions and framed both as public-safety protections and as limits on federal overreach [1] [2]. Major examples include state statutes and municipal policies that prohibit detention solely on ICE detainers, bar 287(g) or similar deputization agreements, and require judicial warrants before ICE may enter local jails or other sensitive sites [3] [1] [4].
1. Sanctuary policies: a broad umbrella that limits routine cooperation
Many cities and states have adopted so‑called sanctuary policies—an amorphous category of laws, ordinances, and formal directives under which state and local officials limit routine cooperation with federal immigration authorities without obstructing lawful federal action—most commonly by refusing to honor ICE detainers, declining to ask about immigration status, or restricting information-sharing with ICE [1]. Advocates frame these as trust‑building measures to keep crime victims and witnesses willing to engage with local law enforcement, while critics argue such limits hamper the transfer of convicted criminal aliens to federal custody and could threaten public safety [1] [2].
2. Statutory bans on honoring ICE detainers and civil warrants
Several jurisdictions have enacted statutes or administrative rules that forbid local agencies from detaining individuals solely on ICE civil immigration detainers or warrants; Illinois’ SB 0667 is a clear example, prohibiting detention based only on an immigration detainer and restricting contracts to house people for federal civil immigration violations, with subsequent Illinois measures in 2025 further curtailing 287(g) agreements and questioning status inquiries [3]. These rules directly target one of ICE’s most commonly used tools—detainers that ask jails to hold people beyond release time—and thereby restrict an easy pathway for ICE custody transfers [2] [3].
3. Bans or limits on 287(g) and deputization agreements
A discrete policy lever has been whether localities will enter into 287(g) deputization agreements or similar cooperative arrangements that give local officers certain federal immigration authorities; states and localities opposing cooperation have moved to ban such contracts or make them politically costly, while other states have required or pushed counties to adopt such models, illustrating starkly divergent state-level choices [5] [6]. Where jurisdictions ban 287(g) or decline to deputize officers, ICE loses an embedded local enforcement capacity that it has used to expand interior arrests [7] [5].
4. Warrant requirements and judicial checks on ICE entry
Some proposed and enacted measures require that ICE obtain judicial warrants or demonstrable probable cause before entering jails, courthouses, or other public facilities to conduct arrests—proposals such as New York’s “New York For All” Act would limit cooperation to situations with a judge‑issued warrant, mirroring court‑imposed or negotiated limits elsewhere, including consent-decree outcomes that curb warrantless arrests [4] [8]. Courts and consent decrees have also become de facto policy-makers, extending constraints on ICE tactics in places like Chicago through litigation [8].
5. Fiscal and service responses that indirectly limit ICE access
Beyond explicit noncooperation rules, several local governments have invested in legal services and defense funds for immigrants and adopted administrative measures to shield information or facilities from ICE—New York City, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles County directed substantial funding toward immigrant legal services and assistance in 2025–2026 budgets, actions that strengthen legal defenses and community resilience against enforcement even where formal “sanctuary” labels vary [5]. These fiscal choices are part of a broader strategy to blunt ICE’s operational aims by increasing legal capacity and reducing community vulnerability [5].
6. Political conflict and limitations of the evidence
State and local restrictions exist in a climate of intense political variation—some states (e.g., Florida, Texas) have moved to compel local cooperation while others (e.g., Illinois, New York, Oregon) have enacted protections—so the landscape is fragmented and evolving [6] [9]. Reporting and datasets summarize broad categories (maps of “states that limit cooperation”) but do not standardize definitions across jurisdictions, and this reporting cannot fully catalog every local ordinance or quantify how specific policies perform in every locality; where sources do not describe a specific municipal ordinance, this analysis does not speculate about its existence [5] [1].