Hogan Says Law Enforcement Will ‘ignore’ Ice Legislation Backed By Wes Moore

Former Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday undercut Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, saying local law enforcement will ignore an emergency bill signed by Moore that prohibits cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“All the local law enforcement, obviously we're going to ignore that, because we're required to work with them,” Hogan said. “When they have violent criminals that they're holding in jail, that ICE wants to be detained, they shouldn't be left back on the street. So there's two sides to this argument.”

Hogan’s comments came during a conversation with former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano at the POLITICO Governor’s Summit in Washington, D.C. Moore spoke on the same stage just an hour before Hogan’s comments.

The bill Moore signed into law Tuesday would block local law enforcement from creating new partnerships that allow state authorities to detain noncitizens for 48 hours and to serve them with administrative warrants, and end all such existing partnerships with ICE by July. Nine jurisdictions in Maryland already have these partnerships in place.

After signing the bill, Moore pledged to still coordinate with ICE on “the lawful removal of non-citizen offenders who pose a risk to public safety.”

Maryland’s law is the latest example of blue states banning local partnerships with ICE. New Mexico and Maine passed similar laws earlier this year, joining California, Illinois and Washington state, which already had such prohibitions.

Hogan also took a shot at Minnesota officials’ response to ICE’s “heavy handed” enforcement earlier this year, calling it “an example of what not to do.”

“They were all on cable news performing,” Hogan said. “The mayor and the governor blaming the president, the president blaming the mayor and the governor, and yet no one was talking about what was actually going on.”