WASHINGTON — Fentanyl seizures decreased by 39% during the first year of the second Trump administration after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shifted the Department of Homeland Security’s criminal investigations arm to conducting immigration enforcement, according to a report government investigators published Friday. 

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a subagency of DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reported an “all hands-on deck” environment toward immigration enforcement began in January 2025, according to the DHS Office of Inspector General report.

“With ICE dedicating more staff hours to immigration investigations, staffing hours for fentanyl investigations declined,” the report said.

The report found that the hours dedicated to fentanyl investigations for fiscal 2025 declined by more than 250,000 hours, or 31%, compared to fiscal 2024.

“At the same time, immigration enforcement saw the largest increase across all investigative categories, rising more than 1.7 million hours (over 800 percent),” according to the report.

Inspectors interviewed more than 100 agents from 11 HSI field offices for the report.

At one HSI office, approximately 99% of work was dedicated to immigration, leaving almost no capacity for fentanyl investigations, the watchdog found. A drug investigation team of seven agents was reduced to about three and the rest of the personnel was reassigned to work on immigration cases, according to the report.  

Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that is the main driver of overdose deaths in the United States. HSI plays a key role in countering fentanyl smuggling in the U.S. by targeting routes, laboratories and collaborating with law enforcement to investigate smuggling operations.    

ICE agrees

The inspector general recommended that HSI review staffing levels “to ensure an appropriate level of coverage commensurate with the relative priority of fentanyl investigations.”

Inspector general reports are presented to the affected agency for comment ahead of publication. ICE agreed with the recommendations in the DHS OIG report.

“Homeland Security Investigations will review staffing levels, and determine and implement next steps, as needed, to ensure an appropriate level of coverage commensurate with the relative priority of fentanyl investigations,” ICE’s comments in the report read.

ICE estimated that recommendation would be completed by June 2027.

The report also found that the technology HSI agents and analysts used had limitations during fentanyl investigations and their missions were “hindered by delays in agents obtaining funds to purchase information and evidence (i.e., drugs) during an investigation; a lack of independent authority to investigate fentanyl-related offenses; and low, inconsistent referral of fentanyl cases from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to HSI.”

Democratic lawmakers proposed nearly 250 bills in state capitols this year seeking to limit federal immigration efforts as they sought to push back against what they view as federal government overreach. 

In a new report tallying 2026 action, State Futures, a nonprofit coordinating hundreds of Democratic lawmakers across the states, tracked 242 pieces of such legislation introduced across 32 states. About a fifth of them passed. Most of the measures address the ramped up immigration enforcement efforts that have defined President Donald Trump’s second term. 

Some of those bills have faced Republican opposition and White House challenges. But Democratic governors have also raised concerns and even vetoed some measures, saying they supported their aims, but worried they could have unintended consequences and invite litigation.

The bills sought to ban the masking of immigration officers, protect against immigration enforcement in sensitive places such as schools and hospitals and enact new zoning regulations on private detention facilities, among other issues.

State Futures said 53 bills passed in 17 states this year, though several were vetoed or still await action from governors. Many of those bills face legal review as courts weigh the limits of state authority to regulate federal action.

But lawmakers say those numbers underscore the left’s growing embrace of federalism — the division of power between federal and state governments — that has gained traction during the second Trump presidency.

Rhode Island state Sen. Tiara Mack said many Democrats, including herself, have been wary of championing states’ rights, an ideology that evokes odious memories of slavery and segregation. But she said constituents are demanding action from state leaders to oppose the White House’s hardline immigration arrest and deportation efforts.

“This new landscape requires legislators to really own the narrative and own the reality that federalism is something that we can use as a tool to strengthen protections for our state,” she said, “and we have to work with states across the country.”

Mack is a co-chair of State Futures’ federal response working group that shares legislative ideas with state lawmakers across the country. This year, she was among those sponsoring Rhode Island legislation that seeks to protect people from immigration arrests while attending court proceedings. Signed into law in June, that law says violators of the protections can be held in contempt of court and can face a lawsuit from those arrested without a judicial order or warrant. 

Virginia Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed a similar bill that would have prohibited immigration enforcement in courthouses, schools and hospitals. In her veto message, the governor said she appreciated the intention of the bill but worried it would put security guards and law enforcement in the “untenable position” of choosing whether to break federal or state law. 

Another Delaware measure is currently awaiting action from Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer.  

Mack said lawmakers are increasingly coordinating across state lines, learning from legislative wins and failures in other capitols. As an example, she pointed to a California law aimed at banning federal and state agents from wearing masks.

A judge blocked that law earlier this year because it exempted state law enforcement, saying it therefore discriminated against federal agents. A similar proposal in Rhode Island, which was held in committee this session, seeks to stop all law enforcement officers from concealing their identity.

Oregon governor signs slew of bills protecting immigrants amid federal crackdown

Oregon Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek signed eight laws this April seeking to defend immigrant rights. Those laws protect against enforcement efforts in schools and hospitals, ensure individuals’ data remains confidential from the feds and allow people to sue the federal government for violating the law.

In Colorado, lawmakers this year expanded the health department’s authority to inspect immigration detention facilities and required compliance with state health and safety standards and reporting rules. That law is currently being challenged by a private prison operator as state officials demand more access and information regarding at least one tuberculosis case among detainees.

Colorado state Sen. Mike Weissman, one of the sponsors of that measure, said he’s worked with Democratic colleagues across conservative and liberal states more than ever before to oppose federal government efforts.

“We all talk because we all have the same concerns,” he said, “and that is to protect the basic freedoms of our people from an absolutely out of control federal regime.”

This story was updated with the number of bills that passed as of Aug. 13. Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

On June 11,  ICE agents trailed a car into the parking lot of Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore. For the family riding in that car, an everyday school drop off quickly devolved into chaos.

ICE agents pulled Jesus Acevedo Sanchez from the vehicle, pinned him to the ground and arrested him for being in the country illegally. They also handcuffed and detained his wife, Adriana Gavilan Sanchez, as the couple’s two daughters watched from the back seat and school staff whisked other students away from the scene.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson later told CNN that Acevedo Sanchez “refused lawful commands, violently resisted arrest, and used his vehicle to evade law enforcement, dragging an ICE offer in the process.”

But two weeks ago, a federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release him, ruling that agents did not have probable cause to make the arrest. In the courtroom, Judge Julie Rubin rebuked the ICE officers for failing to follow due process and described the incident outside the school as a “stomach churner.”

Since President Donald Trump began his second term with a vow to crack down on illegal immigration, more than a dozen states have enacted laws designed to keep ICE away from schools. But the incident in Baltimore was a stark illustration of the limits of state and local authority when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Both Maryland and the city of Baltimore have enacted such measures, but neither one prevented ICE agents from making arrests in full view of arriving students at the Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School.

“Schools are places where children should feel safe, where parents should be able to drop off their kids without fear, and where educators should be able to focus on teaching — not where federal agents carry out immigration enforcement actions in front of children,” Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement he released on the day of the incident.

In a phone interview, Zeke Cohen, the Democratic president of the Baltimore City Council, said “the behavior of ICE has been tragic, traumatic, and in violation of all of the principles that we hold dear in Baltimore.”

“They are reckless, they are lawless, and they do whatever they please,” Cohen said. “It’s a challenging situation for cities like Baltimore that prize diversity and inclusion when you have a government that does the opposite.”

The day after its inauguration, the Trump administration announced that it would reverse guidance in place since 2011 that restricted migrant arrests at “sensitive locations,” including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Since then, there have been at least 17 ICE encounters on school grounds, according to a tracker maintained by K-12 Dive, an education news website.

Katherine Currie, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said that ICE is not targeting schools, but that immigration enforcement “is a clear federal responsibility” under the U.S. Constitution.

“ICE is not going to schools to arrest children — we are protecting children. Criminals are no longer able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest,” Currie wrote in an email.

“If a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety.”

Warrant required

The state and city restrictions on ICE activity in schools don’t challenge the supremacy of the federal government under the Constitution. Instead, they mostly limit what state, local and school officials can do to assist ICE, often specifying that federal agents should not be granted access to school property without a judicial warrant.

Matthew Lopas, director of state advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, said blocking ICE agents from entering school premises without a warrant “is not in conflict with federal law.”

“It is merely saying that this is not a place where immigration enforcement should be coming on fishing expeditions,” Lopas said.

Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs, executive director and CEO of the National School Boards Association, said there are very few situations in which ICE would be justified in showing up at a school.

“We don’t see a need for law enforcement to be executing any activities on school grounds, unless it’s in response to an emergency situation,” McCotter-Jacobs said. ,“It causes stress and distractions to learning, which impacts every single child and every child in the building as well as staff.”

She added that when it does happen, it’s crucial for school officials to be on the same page with state and local law enforcement.

“Some states are unfortunately aligned with the feds in executing arrests on school grounds, and so that leaves the local school district kind of perplexed as to what they’re supposed to do,” she said.

Indiana, for example, enacted a sweeping law this year that bars school districts and universities from implementing any measure that prohibits or restricts public employees from cooperating with ICE. In November, Republican state Attorney General Todd Rokita sued the Indianapolis Public Schools for violating the law.

Ohio is another Republican-led state where political leaders are largely supportive of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, and it has not enacted a law restricting ICE activities on school grounds. But Chad Springer, superintendent of the Athens City School District in Chauncey, said his district’s immigration enforcement policy does focus on whether agents have a warrant.

As soon the Trump administration reversed the “sensitive location” policy last year, Springer said, he visited each of his campuses to explain how the district wanted them to respond in case of an ICE enforcement action.

“At any given time, there’s always a central office staff that’s going to respond if immigration did show up to a campus, and then we would be the ones to deal directly with immigration officials,” Springer explained. “And our board policy dictates we ask them, unless a judicial warrant is involved, to conduct business outside of the school day, not on school grounds.”

Springer said that every school board across the country should be crystal clear about how it would handle any law enforcement activity on campus. He said he understands his own district’s policy, but he’d welcome more direction from the state.

“In the absence of clarity, you have unclear measures, and that leads to confusion,” Springer said. “I would appreciate clear, explicit guidelines from lawmakers as to when we allow or don’t allow [officers] to be there…right now, all I can lean on is board policy.”

The coming school year

In Ohio and elsewhere, the Trump administration’s announcement late last month that it will terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 330,000 Haitians living in the U.S. will heighten the potential for ICE enforcement at schools.  In Ohio alone, there are about 30,000 Haitians who formerly had that status, which allows people from certain countries to live and work in the U.S. if returning to their home country would be dangerous.

Jeff Wensing, president of the Ohio Education Association, said educators, particularly in cities such as Springfield with large Haitian populations, are concerned about what the new year might bring.

“So we gave guidance to our members in Springfield: ‘Here are your rights,’” Wensing said. “I don’t care who you are — if you are a stranger, including ICE agents, we have a policy, we’re not letting strangers into the school.”

As far as he’s concerned the law is clear.

“They have a legal right to attend a public school, regardless of their immigration status,” Wensing said. “When you make children pawns in a bigger game, that’s never a good thing.”

This story has been updated to correct the title of Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs. Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Federal immigration agents are employing new tactics — from arresting academics at airports to setting up a checkpoint at a popular creek in a National Forest — to boost their arrest numbers, leading to more arrests in July than in any previous month of the Trump administration.

Though it is striving to fulfill the White House’s demand for more arrests, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is still falling short of the Trump administration’s announced goal of 2,000 arrests per day. And more arrests won’t necessarily translate into more deportations, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The focus is so much on the arrest numbers that the mission seems a little confused to the general public,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said.

She noted that many of the new arrests catch non-criminals in a legal “gray area,” such as having an expired visa while applying for another legal status. Such people are hardly the “worst of the worst” the Trump administration has identified as its top targets, she said.

“Meeting some arbitrary arrest quota doesn’t necessarily serve this larger purpose of deporting a larger number of people, so there’s a disconnect about what the mission really is.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told Stateline it arrested about 51,000 immigrants in July, up from 43,000 in June and the highest number recorded by the Trump administration. The administration did not release state specific numbers.

The department said that last month it arrested an average of 20-40 people per day at airports, as federal agents targeted passengers with expired visas.  According to media reports, those arrested last month  included a Cameroonian researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore  — a Fulbright scholar — and a University of Maryland instructor from Ethiopia who was detained as he returned  from a conference where he accepted a Teacher of the Year award. Advocates suggested immigrants with expired visas should not travel without consulting an attorney.

Arrests based on expired visas are likely to continue and will accelerate in September when a new rule takes effect that sets stricter time limits on visas for students, exchange visitors and foreign media.

Michael Clemens, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins, has estimated that by limiting the number of international STEM students, instructors and researchers in the U.S., the new rule could cost the nation’s economy as much as $145 billion per year by 2035.

“Implementation of the rule will cause large numbers of highly-skilled students and scholars to fall out of status. We’ll certainly be seeing a lot more cases like the seizure of Fatima Ameaka,” Clemens said, referring to the Johns Hopkins researcher from Cameroon, an expert in disease outbreaks.

In an interview, Clemens said federal immigration authorities “see airports as an easy bottleneck because everyone in there is ID’d, so it’s lower cost to seize people there than in any other place except a prison.”

Kate Angustia, supervisory policy and practice counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group, said it’s a “misconception” that the people being arrested at airports let their visas expire and therefore forfeited their legal status.

“Many of these folks are in a lawful period of authorized stay,” Augusta said. “This means that longstanding policy and practice has been, for decades, to allow these people to remain here as their legal processes continue to be processed by the government.”

DHS said in a statement to Stateline that “this administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

An asylum seeker from Zambia, working as a registered nurse at a Portland, Maine, hospital, was released Thursday after her arrest at Boston Logan International Airport sparked protests.

“Nurses in Maine found out one of their own was locked up and sprung into action to get her out,” Puneet Maharaj, a local nurse union representative, said in a statement.

On July 26, immigration agents set up a checkpoint near Wilson Creek in North Carolina, a site that is popular with Hispanic residents and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Federal agents  arrested 13 people, according to the local sheriff’s office.

There were local protests by Methodist clergy and relatives who said at least some of those arrested had no criminal record and entered the country legally, contradicting a social media post by Republican North Carolina Assembly Speaker Destin Hall calling those arrested “a gang of previously arrested illegal aliens.”

The Sierra Club also protested the arrests.

“Bringing immigration enforcement into public recreation areas undermines the sense of safety and belonging that these spaces provide and could discourage people from visiting national forests and other outdoor spaces altogether,” the organization wrote in a statement.

At the end of July, federal agents and state highway patrol officers conducted roadside checks of trucks in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio “to crack down on illegal, unvetted drivers and unsafe vehicles.” DHS said it detained 51 drivers who were in the country illegally.

The agency has said it is “delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and other criminals.” But less than a third of current detainees have a criminal conviction and 40% have never been accused of anything but non-criminal immigration violations, according to statistics reviewed by Stateline through early July.

The statistics also show that about 2,000 detainees a month have been freed after court-ordered bond hearings as many federal judges, some of them Trump appointees, have ruled against the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention for many immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule on the legality of the policy in its October term.

July also saw two immigrants shot and killed during traffic stops in Texas and Maine. After a brief pause, President Donald Trump ordered such traffic stops to continue, though ICE officers will now wear body cameras when they pull over drivers, according to border czar Tom Homan.

Also in July, a Mexican man who had a valid tourist visa was struck and killed by a truck after he fled ICE officers who pulled him over in St. Augustine, Florida.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

WASHINGTON — Even before Haitian immigrants in Ohio officially lost their Temporary Protected Status, the Department of Homeland Security required dozens of them to report to immigration appointments and accept ankle monitors, according to their attorneys and local advocates.

The practice of using electronic monitoring appears to only be happening in Springfield, Ohio, according to a half dozen advocates and immigration attorneys representing Haitians. 

Additionally, community leaders and lawyers from other cities with large Haitian immigrant populations such as Boston, Chicago and Miami have not seen the same tactic. One advocate has seen an increased presence of federal immigration agents in Brooklyn, New York, but so far no check-ins. The advocates and lawyers from Springfield said they do not know the exact number of Haitians under electronic monitoring. 

“It’s really just theater,” said Lynn Tramonte, the executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, an advocacy group. “They’re putting ankle monitors on people to make it look like they’re doing something, but it’s devastating for the people who are getting these placed on their ankle. They’re a constant reminder that you’re not free.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a detailed list of questions from States Newsroom regarding the use of ankle monitors. 

The use of ankle monitors for immigrants who have no criminal background and previously held legal status is a departure from standard practice. Typically an ankle monitor is used for immigrants with a criminal record, an order for deportation, or a missed appearance in immigration court. 

Springfield is home to 15,000 Haitian immigrants. The community became a focus of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations in September 2024 when he falsely accused them of eating house pets and vowed to terminate their legal protections in order to deport them. 

The Supreme Court in June cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS for up to 350,000 Haitians. The case is now back at a lower court in the District of Columbia, which is litigating whether the government’s decision to end protections for Haitians was based on racial animus. 

Deportation or monitoring

Following the ruling, the DHS sent letters to Haitians in Springfield as early as July 22, said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. States Newsroom has reviewed a copy of the letter that dozens of Haitians in Springfield received directing them to bring all their immigration documents to an appointment at an ICE office.

Then, on July 31, about 50 Haitians had check-in appointments at the Cincinnati ICE field office. At the appointments, they were pressured to accept $2,600 to self-deport or alternatively to wear an ankle monitor. 

All of them rejected the money, Jozef said. 

“Being deported to Haiti right now is a death sentence,” she said. 

Two days later, on Aug. 2, a dozen Haitians with TPS were summoned to check-ins and left with ankle monitors, said Katie Kersh, the managing attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to immigrants in Ohio.

“The people getting the ankle monitors are the people who are complying … and they’re getting this thing that we connote with criminality, which is an ankle monitor, when they’ve literally gotten that because they followed the orders of the call-in letter,” Kersh said.

The practice could ramp up following Wednesday’s order from a federal judge that lifted a stay in place since February that prevented the Trump administration from ending temporary protections for as many as 350,000 Haitians. 

On the same day the stay was lifted, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in an interview with NewsNation that the department was “going after (Haitians) right now.”

“We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own and we’ll help you, or we’ll arrest you and send you back,” he said. “Either way, you don’t have status inside this country anymore.”

Chaotic rollout

Immigration attorneys and advocates for Haitians in Ohio described to States Newsroom a disorganized scene at the ICE check-in appointments on July 31 and Aug. 2.

Kersh said she witnessed ICE officers taking out brand-new ankle monitors that weren’t charged. 

Instructions were only provided in English and Spanish, when the first language for many Haitians is usually Creole. A translator was nowhere to be found, she added, so she brought one along.

ICE personnel appeared unable to be flexible when issues arose. A Haitian woman who worked a night shift wouldn’t have time to charge the ankle monitor given to her Aug. 2, Kersh said.

An ICE officer told the woman “to just charge it while you’re sleeping,” and the woman, whom Kersh represented, again told the officer that she worked nights, Kersh said. 

Kersh said she tried to find other options for electronic monitoring for her clients, such as a daily facial recognition check-in or a wrist monitor, but said the immigration officials would not deviate.

She said an ICE officer told her that “we are being told from headquarters that we have to ankle monitor them specifically.” 

Permission to travel to court

Another issue is the ankle monitor’s 75-mile radius, Kersh said. 

Ohio’s only immigration court is located in Cleveland, 188 miles from Springfield. So a Haitian with an ankle monitor would first have to get permission from an ICE officer to travel to their court hearing. 

“It just sort of feels like the wheels are off the bus,” she said.

Getting to the appointments was its own hurdle. 

When Haitians received a letter directing them to attend ICE check-ins, many of them had to scramble to find a way to attend because of recently expired driver’s licenses. Ohio legislators passed a law that ties a valid driver’s license to immigration status.

Jozef said the Haitians fitted with ankle monitors last week were told by ICE officers that they would need to return several weeks later and were given no other information on what would happen at future check-ins.

“We are not sure what will happen to the people, but as of right now, the tactic that is being used is to have those call-ins to be able to control the movement of the people, and to be able to target them more easily,” Jozef said.

Longtime Trump goal

Revoking legal status for Haitians to open them up for removal has been a goal of Trump’s since his first administration, but he has ramped up the effort in his second term that began after he made mass deportations a central campaign theme. 

“They really, really, really, really want to target these people,” said Geoffrey Pipoly, the attorney who represented the Haitian TPS holders before the Supreme Court. 

During the first Trump administration, the government tried to end TPS for Haiti with an 18-month wind-down period, but courts blocked the termination. 

“We went from the first Trump administration giving these folks 18 months to get their affairs in order to now, their position is: We’re not even going to give you 32 days from the final judgment of the Supreme Court … as soon as the earliest possible time that we are legally allowed to start deporting people, that’s what we’re going to start doing,” Pipoly said.

After the Supreme Court’s decision in June, lower courts typically have a 32-day deadline to implement the high court’s ruling, meaning that the estimated date for the 6-3 decision regarding Haitians would go into effect July 27. But Haitians were already receiving letters from ICE dated July 22 to report for a check-in. 

16 years of protections

Congress created TPS in the 1990s as a way for nationals who hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, natural disasters or other destabilizing factors, to remain safely in the U.S. The status allows them to remain and work in the United States anywhere from six to 18 months. 

In order to qualify for the program, immigrants must go through a background check and pay application fees each renewal cycle. 

TPS does not provide a pathway to citizenship, but recipients can apply for another immigration status, such as asylum. 

Of the roughly 350,000 Haitians with TPS, about 200,000 of them are in the workforce, according to the immigration advocacy group FWD.us. Of that group, they work in industries like healthcare, retail, agriculture and manufacturing. 

Haiti was first granted TPS in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. In 2021, President Joe Biden extended the protections after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. 

The State Department currently has a “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin this weekend implored states and cities to cooperate with federal immigration officials, which he said would lead to safer and lower-profile arrests and deportations.

Speaking to a group of Democratic and Republican governors gathered for the National Governors Association summer meeting, Mullin called on local governments to help focus on removing the “worst of the worst” offenders, particularly targeting people without legal citizenship status who have criminal court convictions.

The Republican, who previously represented Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, took the stage with Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, the outgoing chair of the national association. Mullin took over the agency after President Donald Trump fired former Secretary Krsti Noem, who defended the high-profile killings of American citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. 

In his remarks on Saturday, Mullin asked states to cooperate with immigration detainers, in which the feds ask local governments to hold people in the country without legal authorization after they have served their time in prison or jail. 

“That shouldn’t be controversial,” he said. “We’re not doing job-site raids. We’re not going to Home Depot and raiding the parking lot. These are individuals that have already been convicted of a crime.”

The secretary said the alternative for so-called sanctuary cities or states that don’t cooperate with ICE is a much more dangerous prospect: ICE agents pursuing arrests of people after they are released.

“We’re going to arrest them, and then we’re going to arrest them in a public space, which could cause more problems and put our officers at risk, the public at risk, and the person we’re serving the detainer at risk.”  

Mullin highlighted the department’s recent success during the World Cup in cooperating with law enforcement, which he said not only ensured the safety of locals and visitors, but provided meaningful human trafficking prevention and the confiscation of counterfeit goods.

“We can’t do it without you guys,” he said. “I’m saying we can work together.”

He focused on cooperation in Oklahoma, where 76 of the state’s 77 counties are working with the federal government to remove immigrants before they are released from jails and prisons. 

“It’s not on the news,” he said. “You don’t see us around because the state is doing most of the work.”

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who took over leadership of the bipartisan governors group this week from Stitt, thanked the secretary for opening up lines of communication with states since taking over.

“There is an absolute difference in what we have seen from the start of the administration to now,” he said.

Moore questioned Mullin about the status of federal security grants, which can aid state anti-terrorism work, provide federal training and boost cybersecurity efforts. 

Mullin said the first thing the agency looked at was whether the local government was cooperating with federal law enforcement. 

“The whole point of the grants is so we can have partnerships,” he said. “…This has nothing to do with picking winners and losers or saying I choose Oklahoma over California — this has to do with it is designed by nature to build a partnership.”

At least 15 states, including Maryland, are identified as sanctuary states by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of immigration. 

Mullin’s comments over the weekend sparked backlash from some Republicans, including prominent Trump ally Steve Bannon. Some of those pundits said Mullin was too lax on deportations after he acknowledged the legal steps migrants could take to gain legal status.

Mullin said naturalization ceremonies occur constantly with nearly 900,000 people becoming U.S. citizens in the past year.

But he said federal officials will have no tolerance for migrants with criminal convictions or those who have not taken the legal steps to remain in the country.

Under Mullin’s watch, ICE has made a record number of immigration arrests.

Immigration arrests reached 1,593 per day in early July in a new push to detain and deport immigrants. In June, there were more than 43,000 arrests, the highest recorded by the Trump administration, according to statistics from ICE.

“There’s a legal system to go through,” he said. “But if you choose not to even begin or not to change your status, if you’ve been here 25 years, I can’t help you.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

Three people who observed federal immigration enforcement during the Trump administration’s sometimes-violent surge said in a federal lawsuit filed Friday the Department of Homeland Security illegally recorded them and revoked their status in the department’s trusted traveler programs.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of California, says the administration violated a federal privacy law, administrative law and the First Amendment by targeting people who observed and protested aggressive immigration enforcement, including during the deadly operation in Minneapolis in January. 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a legal group that advocates for privacy issues related to technology, is also a plaintiff in the case.

Amid a nationwide surge of immigration enforcement that has included federal agents shooting and killing protesters, observers and immigrants, opponents “did what anyone is supposed to do when they disagree with government action: They exercised their First Amendment rights” by assembling, protesting and recording DHS agents’ activity in public, the suit says.

“In response, DHS decided to record the Americans who were peacefully observing its agents,” the suit says.

Officers with the DHS agencies Immigration and Customs Protection and Border Patrol killed two observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in incidents 17 days apart in January. 

‘Driven home by ICE’

ICE and Border Patrol agents used facial recognition technology, license plate readers and other technology to identify protesters and observers. The agents would then use that information in efforts to intimidate and retaliate against protesters, the suit says. 

Federal immigration officers addressed many legal observers by name, despite having never spoken to them. In Minnesota, legal observers tailing DHS agents in a car would commonly be led back to their own home addresses, according to the suit.

“The experience … is so widespread that Minnesota residents have coined a term for it: being ‘driven home by ICE,’” the suit said.

The practice shows that DHS is no longer following its own 2023 policy on facial recognition, the suit says. The department quietly removed the policy from its website — omitting it even from a set of archived pages — during President Donald Trump’s first month back in office, the suit says.

The complaint argues that amounted to a policy change, which DHS did not conduct through the process agencies must follow under the Administrative Procedure Act. 

The department also retaliated against protesters and observers by revoking their status in DHS trusted traveler programs TSA Precheck and Global Entry, the suit says.

Nicole Cleland, a Minnesota woman who is one of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, said Global Entry status was revoked three days after an encounter with a Border Patrol agent whom she was following at a safe distance, according to the suit.

Chilling rights

The suit alleges DHS’ actions have had a chilling effect on First Amendment-protected activity. 

Cleland has stopped observing DHS operations for fear of further retaliation, according to the suit.

The two other individuals who brought the suit, Jacquelyn Ivey of South Carolina and Anna Walker of California, said they experienced “fear, anxiety and emotional distress” following their interactions with DHS officers.

The suit also mentions activity in Maine, North Carolina and Chicago.

DHS response

In response to a request to DHS for comment, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, which administers Global Entry, said trusted traveler status can be denied for “inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

“Global Entry or other CBP Trusted Traveler Program memberships are not revoked because someone exercises their First Amendment rights,” the spokesperson wrote. “Membership may be denied or revoked for reasons such as criminal activity (including pending charges or warrants), violations of customs or immigration laws, or inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

The spokesperson added that travelers whose Global Entry is denied or revoked can ask for additional review. A Global Entry ombudsman provides “additional oversight” of some cases, the spokesperson said. 

A denial of Global Entry is not an impediment to travel, they wrote.

DHS did not respond to questions about its policies for recording or using facial recognition on observers.

WASHINGTON — A supermajority of the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus has asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to deploy body cameras to all federal immigration officers, following deadly shootings of immigrants in Texas and Maine.

In a July 19 letter addressed to Mullin, 38 Senate Democrats and Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, requested information about the shootings this month in Houston of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and in Biddeford, Maine, of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. 

Neither man was the initial enforcement target when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stopped their vehicles, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

“The unnecessary loss of life in these incidents demands immediate, thorough, independent, and transparent investigations (including the full involvement of local and state law enforcement personnel), along with a comprehensive examination of enforcement protocols, training, and operational approaches necessary to prevent such tragedies,” the senators wrote.

The lawmakers pressed Mullin about providing body cameras to immigration officers, pointing out the Congress has allocated $175 billion to the department since last year. From that funding, DHS planned to hire up to 10,000 ICE officers.

“While DHS has previously acknowledged that body-worn cameras promote public trust and increase officer and public safety, accountability, and transparency, the Department has clearly not prioritized acquiring cameras,” the senators wrote.

None of the ICE officers involved in the shootings were wearing body cameras. 

“Contrary to recent statements made by the Department and the White House, DHS has had more than sufficient time and funding to procure and deploy a body-worn camera for every officer before the end of 2025,” they wrote.

Enough funding

Congressional Republicans last year used a special legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support. 

They used the same move following the shutdown this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol through September of 2029. 

Republicans used the maneuver that allows party-line votes after Democrats refused to provide more funding for DHS unless restraints were placed on ICE and Border Patrol officers following the killings of two U.S. citizens — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — by federal immigration agents in Minnesota in January. 

Among Democrats’ demands at the time was that immigration officers wear body cameras. Top Trump officials, including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said body cameras would be provided to immigration agents.

“The recent tragedies confirm that neither of these commitments were honored,” senators wrote in the letter.

Traffic stops unpaused

White House border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that ICE officers will wear “at least one body camera” during traffic stops.

Following the two killings this month, DHS instructed immigration officers to pause vehicle stops, but President Donald Trump quickly instructed the department to continue the policy.  

During the second Trump administration, federal immigration officers have shot 22 people and killed six, including three U.S. citizens. Most of the shootings stemmed from traffic stops.

In the letter, senators also sought information about DHS’s plan to have an independent investigation into the killings, the vetting process for new immigration officers, the department’s procedures for vehicle stops and any additional oversight and reporting requirements DHS is implementing.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House approved a stopgap spending bill Tuesday that would keep the government up and running through the fall, sending it to the Senate, where lawmakers expect to rework the measure.

Congress must pass a government funding bill before the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1 in order to avoid a shutdown just weeks before the November midterm elections.

The 220-205 mostly party-line vote represents House Republicans’ opening salvo in negotiations, though without Democratic support it won’t be able to advance in the Senate. 

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said during floor debate that GOP leaders hope passing the stopgap spending bill months before the start of the next fiscal year will avoid another shutdown. 

“For anyone questioning this legislation, the facts are simple — it extends the government funding deadline to Dec. 4, denying any party the opportunity to manufacture leverage before elections,” Cole said. “It contains no poison pills or partisan riders. It prevents harmful disruptions to our national security and the vital programs our constituents rely on.”

Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the committee, opposed the stopgap, saying it would “allow Homeland Secretary (Markwayne) Mullin to transfer billions of dollars to the Border Patrol.”

Republicans, she said, “refused” to change that aspect of the bill after Democrats “shared language to fix it.”

“We cannot in good conscience allow billions of dollars to flow to these agencies without major reforms to keep our constituents safe from further violence,” DeLauro said. 

Democrats don’t want a government shutdown but also don’t want “to rush” the process and omit the list of anomalies just sent up by the White House, she said. 

Those tweaks to funding levels are commonly added to stopgap spending bills but weren’t included in House Republicans’ measure because it was written before the White House sent a list of requested anomalies to lawmakers Monday. 

“There are over 50 programs listed by the agencies to take some action so that they can be protected during a continuing resolution,” DeLauro said, using the technical term for a short-term funding bill. 

The changes would support wildfire suppression activities, housing assistance for tens of thousands and programs that help people in rural communities afford their utilities.

“Rushing this bill to the floor haphazardly without carefully considering the various needs that must be met is no way to govern,” DeLauro said. “And it is irresponsible.” 

Senate anticipates changes

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said earlier in the day that she was working with the committee’s top Democrat, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, to draft a continuing resolution of their own. 

“It appears that there is good faith on the Democratic side to try to pass the CR and avoid a government shutdown, which is always a disaster,” Collins said. 

Murray said the House’s stopgap spending bill has “problems” that will need to be fixed in order to move through the Senate.

“We just got the anomalies last night and both of us are trying to figure out the best way to get it put together,” Murray said. 

Appropriations status

Lawmakers must lean on a stopgap spending bill because they will, once again, fail to complete work on the dozen annual government funding bills before the deadline. 

The House has passed three of its spending bills. The Senate hasn’t passed any, in part, because the committee hasn’t released a single bill. The two chambers will need to begin negotiations at some point to settle on a total spending level for the 12 bills and how that roughly $1.9 trillion will be broken down among thousands of federal agencies and programs. 

That means the earliest the full-year government spending bills would become law is during the lame-duck session that is set to last for about five weeks between the election and the start of the new Congress in January. 

Lawmakers could also pass a series of stopgap funding bills instead of completing negotiations on the full-year appropriations bills. 

As the Trump administration continues its crackdown  on illegal immigration, states and cities that have pushed back with so-called sanctuary policies have faced a barrage of lawsuits from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The administration has filed a total of 27 lawsuits against more than 20 cities, counties and states with such policies since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, according to the Justice Department. In just the past three months, the administration has sued at least a half dozen jurisdictions, including Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, a county in Michigan, and the city of Philadelphia, for seeking to place limits on the activities of  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

These policies tend to focus on restricting immigration enforcement in public spaces, limiting how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration authorities, and barring both local and federal immigration agents from wearing masks or otherwise concealing their identity while on duty.

“These sanctuary policies are most times created to help make communities safer. They promote a greater level of trust and cooperation between communities and public institutions of all kinds,” said Cassandra Charles, senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group.

Some cities have had sanctuary policies since the 1980s, but Charles said many states and cities are creating new protections as the Trump administration has ramped up its deportation campaign. She described the current swell of litigation as “unprecedented.”

Charles said the administration is misinterpreting the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that federal law trumps state law. That clause, she argued, does not allow the federal government to dictate what laws states can pass, nor does it “create a duty for the states to help the federal government enforce federal law.”

But the Justice Department argues that sanctuary laws violate longstanding constitutional precedent and prevent the federal government from conducting lawful enforcement activities.

“As explained in DOJ’s briefs in these cases, states and localities do not have a right to obstruct federal law enforcement, to regulate the federal government, or to discriminate against the federal government,” Kiersten Pels, an agency spokesperson wrote in an email. “These and other cases simply seek to vindicate that fundamental aspect of our constitutional structure.”

The lawsuits have yielded mixed results.

In May 2025, the Justice Department sued four New Jersey cities (Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark and Paterson) to challenge their policies curtailing local cooperation with federal immigration agents. The next month, a U.S. district judge in New Jersey, appointed by President Joe Biden, tossed out the suit, arguing the cities’ policies didn’t impede ICE activities because of the state’s existing sanctuary laws.

But earlier this month, a U.S. district judge in Pennsylvania sided with the administration in a lawsuit challenging a new Philadelphia policy.

Last month, the administration sued to stop the city of Philadelphia from implementing a new policy barring immigration agents from wearing masks, concealing their badges, or using unmarked vehicles while on the job. Last week, the judge—a Trump appointee—cited the Supremacy Clause in siding with the administration, issuing a preliminary injunction blocking the city from moving forward.

When the Philadelphia City Council approved the policy, the judge ruled, “it attempted to sidestep the Constitution’s clear mandate and disregarded this fundamental principle of law that has informed American jurisprudence for over 200 years.”

The new policy barring officers from concealing their identities was part of a package of seven ICE-related bills the council approved in April. Rue Landau, the city council member who sponsored the package, noted that the other measures have taken effect.

“If the federal government won’t protect their residents, local leaders have the obligation to step up to the plate, and that’s exactly what we did here in Philadelphia,” Landau said. “Great news for Philadelphia: We’ve got six laws on the books, and right now we are working on ensuring that the city of Philadelphia clearly spells out how we’re implementing these laws.”

In late April, the administration filed a similar lawsuit against the state of New Jersey to challenge a law, enacted in March, that prohibits immigration agents from shielding their identity while on duty.

Maryland is the latest state to face a DOJ lawsuit.

Its new law, in effect since May 31, prohibits state and local correctional officers and law enforcement agents from inquiring about or investigating a person’s immigration status. It also bars them from detaining or transferring a person to federal authorities for a suspected immigration violation without a warrant or court order.

Last week, the Justice Department sued Maryland to stop the law, arguing that its “purpose and effect is to obstruct federal law enforcement.”

“Such blatant disregard for federal laws that have been on the books for decades is not merely a political disagreement or passive abstention; it is deliberate, disruptive action that jeopardizes the public safety for all Americans,” the lawsuit states.

In May, local sheriffs from 17 counties in Maryland also sued the state to halt the new law. Their complaint argues that the law puts them in “an impossible and unconstitutional position.”

“If Plaintiffs follow the Act, they are effectively forced to shield removable aliens from federal custody,” the lawsuit states, while “if they continue cooperating with ICE as they have for years, they risk state penalties and lawsuits.”

In some sections, the sheriffs’ lawsuit and the DOJ lawsuit against Maryland employ identical language.

Chris Hajec, head of litigation at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter immigration enforcement and filed the lawsuit on behalf of the sheriffs, said the Maryland law “puts (the sheriffs) in a dilemma.”

“Either they’re violating the state law and they’re going to get sued by their attorney general, or they’re violating the federal criminal law and they could be prosecuted,” Hajec said.

But Maryland Democratic state Sen. Clarence Lam, the Senate sponsor of the new law, dismissed that argument. Lam said the law only limits what state officers can do, without obstructing ICE from carrying out its duties.

“We think that these efforts to block the implementation are bogus,” Lam told Stateline. “We as a state are wholly within our right and jurisdiction to be able to place limitations on what state and local law enforcement agencies can do. There’s nothing that prevents us from doing so, and that’s all this does.”

“Our state taxpayer dollars should not go towards having local law enforcement enforce federal immigration law.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on July 13 killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national with legal work authorization, in Maine, making him the 22nd person shot at by federal immigration officers during President Donald Trump’s second term. 

Nearly all of those 22 incidents – 19 – involved Department of Homeland Security officers shooting upon people in their vehicles during traffic stops, a crucial nexus, according to a States Newsroom review of news reports and documents. The encounters spanned the nation, from Colorado to Texas to Oregon to New Jersey.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, where he promised to carry out an aggressive immigration crackdown, federal immigration officers have killed six people, three of them U.S. citizens. Four deaths came during traffic stops.

Following Guerrero’s death, the second immigrant to be killed by ICE officers during a traffic stop in a week, DHS put a pause on traffic stop enforcement. But Trump quickly ordered the department to abandon those plans.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that officers will conduct vehicle-related enforcement stops “in order to continue their deportation campaign.”

The agency has plenty of funding at hand. Congressional Republicans last year used a legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support. GOP lawmakers did the same move this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol until September of 2029.

After the ICE shooting in Biddeford, the entire Maine congressional delegation called for an independent investigation, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins urging an end to vehicle enforcement.

A Thursday report from the American Civil Liberties Union found patterns of misconduct by immigration agents during Trump’s second term, identifying 432 incidents where agents either used or threatened to use force against immigrants and bystanders.

The report reviewed more than 1,200 incidents across eight states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New Mexico. 

Of the traffic-related enforcement, the ACLU found in 76 instances, people and passengers were pulled from their cars; windows were smashed 47 times; officers 14 times rammed vehicles into people’s cars; and they hit people with cars six times. 

What happened afterward

In the moments after those 22 shootings, DHS has quickly accused those who were fired upon of using their vehicles as weapons against immigration officers. 

But independent video has often contradicted that narrative. 

In at least five cases DHS brought, charges were dismissed after the department accused U.S. citizens and immigrants shot by federal agents as being the aggressors. 

In August 2025, Francisco Longoria, a Mexican national, was driving his vehicle in San Bernardino, California, when federal immigration agents in unmarked cars tried to pull him over. He fled and the agents fired upon him.

The Department of Justice charged him with attempting to harm agents, but prosecutors couldn’t defend the DHS actions and charges were dismissed. Longoria was not injured.

Marimar Martinez was labeled a domestic terrorist by DHS and indicted after she was shot in her car five times by Border Patrol agents in October 2025, during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration deportation campaign in Chicago. DOJ dropped its charges against Martinez, a U.S. citizen, after the Trump administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.

When the president initially directed immigration agents to the nation’s capitol, Phillip M. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was pulled over by law enforcement, including an immigration officer who shot into his vehicle. During the October 2025 shooting, Brown was not injured, but charged with fleeing from law enforcement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case.

During the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation drive in Minneapolis in January, that left two U.S. citizens dead, a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot by a federal agent while in his home. DHS accused Cesar Sosa-Celis of striking an immigration officer with a broom handle, but Cesar Sosa-Celis denied it and surveillance video contracted the federal government’s claim.

The immigration agent who shot Cesar Sosa-Celis was prosecuted by local Minnesota officials and arrested in May for falsely reporting a crime and for assault.

In Houston, on July 7, ICE officers killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, saying he tried to run over agents as has been the case in other incidents.

Salgado Araujo was driving several other people to work that morning when immigration officers approached his van. He was not considered a person of interest, DHS has stated.

The FBI has sought a search warrant to seize plastic bags with “crystal-like substances,” to test for methamphetamine, according to the Texas Tribune. One of the lawyers representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the van during the shooting, said it was granulated salt.

A grim beginning to the year

The most people shot by federal immigration agents was in January.  Three of the five people shot by ICE and Border Patrol officers were in Minnesota, with two of them fatalities. 

The two deaths were in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration conducted an aggressive deportation campaign that targeted the city, which has a high Somali refugee population. 

That month, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, and shot and wounded Cesar Sosa-Celis. 

Good was killed while in her vehicle, which then DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled her as a domestic terrorist. DHS accused Good of using her SUV as a weapon, but independent video did not uphold that allegation.

A week later, federal immigration officers shot and killed intensive care unit nurse Pretti, who was recording agents on his phone and helping a woman who was pushed down by them. Noem again labeled him a domestic terrorist and said he was attacking agents, but multiple videos taken from different angles do not show that.

Democrats are seizing the mantle of states’ rights to oppose the agenda of President Donald Trump, who has sought to reset Washington’s relationship with the states. 

While the party out of federal power has always pushed its agenda in statehouses, Democrats across the country have recently demanded more autonomy for governors and state lawmakers. Liberals, longtime proponents of a stronger central government, are now championing an ideology that evokes odious memories of slavery and segregation.  

Many state leaders hope that a renewed focus on federalism could help lower the national political temperature. By shifting more political decisions to the states, they envision a nation less subject to blue-red swings that change the entire course of federal law enforcement, environmental policy and business regulation. 

“Otherwise we just end up fighting every four years over red king-blue king,” said Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican. “And our entire nation goes entirely one way, and then 180 degrees the other way.”

Ivory said the pendulum swinging is “ripping our nation apart” politically and costing untold dollars as national policy reverses depending on who is in power. He leads Utah’s Federalism Commission, a bipartisan legislative group assessing state-federal boundaries and working to educate leaders across the country on federalism issues. 

While he’s been pushing for a smaller federal government and heightened role for the states for years, he said the fiery policy debates in Trump’s second term have given the effort unprecedented momentum. 

Last June, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said the White House had violated his state’s sovereignty in deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles without the governor’s consent. In a lawsuit the state ultimately won, California cited arguments made by founding father James Madison in the Federalist Papers calling for ratification of the Constitution more than 200 years ago. 

And this winter in Minnesota, Democrats pushed for more state oversight of the federal government after immigration officers killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. 

“This is a matter of states’ rights,” said Democratic state Senate leader Erin Murphy. “And while we can’t impact — except for next November – the makeup of Congress, we can impact and bring relief for the people of Minnesota.”

Many of the most high-profile conversations surrounding states rights’ have proven predictably partisan. Yet Democrats and Republicans behind the scenes have been quietly building momentum for a rebalancing of state-federal authority.  

Conservative state lawmakers who have long pushed for a smaller federal government are welcoming liberal counterparts to a growing movement underscoring the importance of federalism, the uniquely American system created by the framers of the Constitution to share power between Washington, D.C., and the states.

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Stateline is exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the third in an occasional series examining the fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.

In Utah, the Republican House speaker called Rep. Ivory several days after Trump’s 2024 election, noting that even California’s liberal governor was talking about federalism.

“He says, ‘We have the opportunity of our lifetime. … We need to get out and work with other states, get them together,’” Ivory recalled. 

“I said, Mr. Speaker, I agree with you. But if Gavin Newsom does something that we believe is state jurisdiction, even if we don’t like the policy, we’ve got to stand with him. And he said, ‘I know,’ and that had never happened before.”

‘An inflection point’

The debate over how much power states should wield is as old as the nation itself: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the forebears of our two-party system, famously argued for larger and smaller federal roles, respectively. 

In Trump’s second term, Democrats have leaned on federalism principles as a means of checking federal power, said Troy Smith, a professor of constitutional federalism and director of the Constitutional Federalism Initiative at Utah Valley University in Orem. 

The American federalist system is always evolving as states and the federal government tussle over authority and the two parties come in and out of national power. Smith said state governments, namely governors, have grown increasingly partisan since the 1990s. But that may be changing as Republicans and Democrats embrace states’ rights.

“I think we’re in an inflection point now that looks like it has the potential to go in that direction as the states start recognizing they have many things in common that transcends party and cooperation could be to their benefit,” Smith said.

Federalism scholars took note of December’s inaugural meeting of the Assembly of State Legislative Leaders, a bipartisan gathering of lawmakers from 30 states. Though not highly publicized, that group signed off on a 449-word declaration on the importance of states’ ability to legislate independently. 

“I think that’s pretty unique and telling in this moment that Republican and Democratic leaders came together and unanimously approved that resolution,” Smith said. 

The group of lawmakers has yet to publicize any more meetings and its leader, Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman, declined an interview request.

But New Hampshire House Speaker Sherman Packard, who attended that gathering, said it was clear that concerns over the size and scope of the federal government transcend parties.

“It’s strictly a bipartisan issue,” said Packard, a Republican. “It isn’t an issue that’s dominated by one blue state or one red state. It’s an issue that I think almost every state legislature is dealing with, and red or blue, it’s worth telling the federal government, ‘enough is enough.’”

Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Karen Camper, though, is skeptical that the states will mark meaningful progress during Trump’s term. 

“Bipartisan has become a nasty word for this president,” she said. “So it’s going to have to be after he’s gone, because he will kill it. That’s what I’ve seen from this president.”

Camper, the Tennessee state House minority leader, pointed to May’s special legislative session in which the GOP pushed through a controversial congressional redistricting plan. It splits the state’s only majority-Black congressional district in Memphis across three districts, diluting that area’s vote as Republicans attempt to flip the state’s only Democratic-held district. 

“Look at what just happened in our state,” Camper said, highlighting Trump’s push for redistricting. “That was a chance for our Republican supermajority to say, ‘We’re not going down this road.’” 

Camper is also the chair of the Black Legislative Leaders Network, a national group of Black lawmakers who lead state chambers, caucuses and committees. She said she worries that too much focus on state autonomy could jeopardize important freedoms that were won at the federal level, including civil rights and voting rights.

“So we’re going to be fighting, refighting some of the same stuff, some of the same things that we fought for,” she said. “…We should be protected by these rights, regardless of where we go in this country, but in states’ rights, there’s a chance that you won’t.”

A complicated history

The debate over states’ rights is inextricably tied to race, equality and segregation. 

And some Southerners continue to argue that conflicts over states’ rights — rather than slavery — drove secession ahead of the Civil War. Historians, though, note the only significant right under debate at that time was the right to enslave people.

In the Jim Crow era, Southern states continued the siren call of states’ rights as they defended racial segregation and fought civil rights movements.

While the concept can still evoke those deeply divisive times, liberals in recent years have found political value in embracing states’ rights, said Paul Nolette, professor and director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University and co-editor of a national academic journal on federalism. 

That’s particularly true of Democratic attorneys general, who have been aggressively challenging the White House in the past year with scores of lawsuits over its immigration enforcement efforts, environmental policies and the withholding of federal funds from states.

“If states were just this weak link, then they would be able to do nothing,” Nolette said. “You know, it would just be the federal government getting whatever it wants. But in fact, the states have a lot of tools themselves to push back on the federal government.”

Though the federal government has grown in scope over the decades, Nolette noted, state bureaucracies have also expanded influence. Many federal programs, including the national food stamp program and safety net health insurance, are administered by state governments.

“So the nature of federal policy over the last few decades has actually given states additional powers to have a say in national policy,” he said. 

Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, acknowledged his view of states’ rights has evolved over the years. 

Like many others, the phrase to him frequently evoked the Southerners who championed states’ rights in their efforts to oppose racial integration. The state’s first Black attorney general, Brown previously spent years working in the U.S. Department of Justice, a federal agency he admired for its role in pursuing civil rights cases. 

But he said the Trump era demands a different role for states as the president continues to flout congressional appropriations and punish political opponents.   

“I think certainly we have to look differently at what states’ authorities are in this moment,” he said. 

Brown said a heightened focus on states is welcome after years of outsized attention on national politics. That’s because the issues most important to most people — taxes, schools and public safety — are most affected by local policy decisions, he said. 

Changing the structure 

In Utah, state officials are looking to lead a national movement to bring more authority back to the states. 

While fears over the Trump administration’s overreach have fueled Democratic interest, Ivory, the Republican representative leading that effort, said the initiative is more focused on governmental structure than politics. 

Ivory likened the current federal-state dynamic to a bicycle with a bloated front tire threatening to bust and a back tire so flat it’s about to chew the rubber off the rim.

“Well, the answer is not to get a different rider or a stronger rider or to steer the bike to the left or to the right. It’s to fix the balance in the tires,” he said. “Our structure, our vehicle of government was two spheres with very specific balance, and we haven’t been paying attention to that for a long time.”

This discussion comes naturally in Western states that have for generations feuded with Washington over the proper use and ownership of federal lands. Over 90% of federal lands are located in the West, according to the Congressional Western Caucus, with the federal government owning 1 of every 2 acres. 

Utah’s commission aims at connecting state lawmakers and agency staff from across the country to better adjudicate federal and state jurisdiction on everything from land management to law enforcement. Ivory said the group would also like to help fill the void left after the 1996 disbandment of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, an entity that put state and local governments in direct contact with federal agencies. 

Utah Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost acknowledged her initial skepticism of the GOP’s federalism push there because of its historic ties to slavery and segregation.

“I’m pretty liberal,” she said. “Federalism is something that was always viewed, I think for not unjustified reasons, as something that was hostile to equality and equitable outcomes and fairness.”

But after a 90-minute conversation with her Republican colleague, she began to see the value — especially now — of pushing for an expanded role for states. Now a member of the state’s federalism commission, she said she envisions a better structure where states stand together, regardless of party affiliation, to counterbalance the federal government.

“States are oftentimes too wrapped up in whether we’re blue states or red states to really have each other’s back,” she said. “And it’s been hard, politically, to convince a red state like Utah to vocally say blue-state California wants to do things its way, we have to have their back and say that they have the right to do things that way, even if it’s not how we would do things.”

As a member of the political minority in Utah, she acknowledged how difficult that can be. Utah’s Republican party holds all statewide offices and enjoys supermajorities in both legislative chambers. And Dailey-Provost said the state’s LGBTQ+ population has been subjected to “constant attacks” from the GOP there. 

Still, she said, she would rather have that debate locally than rely on the federal government to protect those residents. 

“So, I don’t like the current policy outcomes, but I see more opportunity to continue to work with communities and try to fix it over time here at the state level,” Dailey-Provost said. “… At least I feel like there’s a path forward at the local level.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. States Newsroom reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@statesnewsroom.com.