Immigrant rights group We Are CASA and four Maryland residents are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Justice and federal officials over alleged warrantless immigration arrests in Maryland.
The lawsuit filed Sept. 10, Guzmán v. DHS, filed with attorneys from the National Immigration Project, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, challenges what plaintiffs describe as ICE’s “arrest first, ask questions later” policy. Plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking to halt the alleged practice while the case proceeds.
“Every day, as Maryland residents go about their daily lives, traveling to and from work, school, church, and other essential activities, federal immigration agents roam the state’s roadways and parking lots hunting for people to arrest to fill their unattainable quotas. The federal agents—most of whom are from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’)—adhere to a consistent policy: aggressively stop people who they perceive to be Brown or Black immigrants and immediately arrest them without a warrant and without making the individual assessments required for such warrantless arrests,” the complaint says.
Yulie Landan, a staff attorney with the National Immigration Project, shared with The Final Call there are two conditions that must be met before an immigration officer can arrest someone without a warrant. “Before an immigration officer can arrest an individual in their car, in the street, out and about without a warrant, they have to pre-arrest—have individualized probable cause as to that specific person that they are both present in violation of the immigration law and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained,” she said.
Atty. Landan painted the picture of how so many warrantless arrests are happening in Maryland. “A lot of them are happening while people are in cars driving. Officers are looking at the driver, are seeing that they look Black or Brown, and that’s when they pull them over. ICE does not have independent authority to conduct traffic stops for traffic violations,” she said. “They are pulling people over, often very violently, forcing them out of their cars and arresting them often without asking them a single question.”
Final Call staff who were part of a delegation sent to Springfield, Ohio, by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, heard similar accounts from Haitian activists assisting residents affected by immigration enforcement. Activists told The Final Call that ICE agents drive through the area in large black vehicles actively looking for people to “kidnap.” (See The Final Call, Vol. 45, No. 50)
Haitians in Maryland are also facing ICE impacts. “One of the things we saw start to change early August is that more and more Haitian individuals are being arrested, and that is related to TPS [Temporary Protected Status] being expired now for Haitian individuals,” Atty. Landan said, adding she has seen an uptick in warrantless arrests in the Haitian community. She shared that there have been nearly 7,000 street arrests between January 2025 and August 5, 2026, and of those arrested, nearly 93% are from Latin American and Caribbean countries. “The number here really speaks for itself, and they are stalking the streets looking for drivers and passengers who they think look Brown and Black, and specifically then with the Haitian TPS expiring, that has only worsened the situation,” she said. U.S. citizens have also been arrested, according to the complaint. Some of those arrested are shackled and forced to spend days in a crowded cell before being whisked away to remote detention facilities across the country, the complaint says. “Some are released weeks or months later after a federal habeas court determines their detention was unlawful,” it adds.
“When they took me—without a warrant, without cause—they didn’t just take my freedom. They took a father away from the school pickup line. They removed a husband from his home. They took an essential worker from a family that depends on him,” We Are CASA quoted an anonymous individual in a statement.
“To my kids—I know you didn’t ask for this. You didn’t ask to be the ones explaining to your friends why Papá wasn’t home. You didn’t ask to be scared every time you heard a car outside, or to grow up faster than you should have,” the individual, identified by the pseudonym Guillermo, said. “But you didn’t just carry that fear silently—you turned it into something else. You stood up for me. You believed in getting your father back when it would have been easier to just be sad and stay quiet. I am standing here today, in part, because my own children refused to give up on me.”
The immigrant rights groups represented plaintiffs in a similar class-action lawsuit in Washington, D.C. In December 2025, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting federal immigration authorities in D.C., from making warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause to believe that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.
“As ICE roams Maryland’s streets looking for people to arrest to fill their quotas, our Brown and Black immigrant neighbors live in constant fear of being arbitrarily arrested, beaten, and shot by masked and armed agents,” Austin Rose, managing attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said in a Sept. 10 statement. “Federal courts in other states have already found that ICE’s ‘arrest first, ask questions later’ policy is blatantly unlawful, and now it’s time to put an end to it here in Maryland.”
When the Department of Homeland Security announced deportation operations in Maryland a few weeks ago, Governor Wes Moore issued a statement criticizing the move. While he pointed out that public safety and working with “federal partners” to maintain this safety, is important, he disagreed with the recent moves by ICE.
“These actions also undermine our economy. I’ve heard firsthand from business leaders across the State that these immigration policies are taking legal workers out of our nursing homes, scaring farmworkers from showing up to work, and making the cost of everything from groceries to delivery services higher,” Gov. Moore said in an Aug. 25 statement.
“Deploying untrained, unqualified, and unaccountable agents to sweep through our communities and spread fear is not a public safety strategy. It undermines trust between law enforcement and the people they serve, and it does not make us safer.”
