The following appendix to the map of State Laws on Immigration Enforcement provides further details on the individual policy choices we analyzed and methodology used in comparing the various state laws. The policy categories are listed and explained below, grouped into five generalized categories:
I. Information and Resource Sharing with DHS
II. Jail to ICE Transfers
III. Patrol Officer Collusion with ICE/CBP
IV. Contracts with ICE or CBP
V. State Criminalization Laws
This appendix reflects the comparisons and analyses we were able to draw across states, but does not capture all of the measures that states have enacted with regard to immigration enforcement. We focused on the most common factors and policy choices and those we thought carry significant impact in the lives of residents of those states.
Policy Categories
I. Information and Resource Sharing with DHS
A. Immigration status checks
Immigration status is not a criminal matter and is generally beyond the purview of local law enforcement. Nevertheless, police and sheriffs often ask people, particularly Black and Brown people, about their immigration status or place of birth. Some state laws (and many local policies) prohibit these inquiries, often as a baseline protection against racial profiling and discrimination. A few states specifically include restrictions on inquiring about place of birth, because this information is often used against immigrants. Other state laws have sought to require immigration status checks by local law enforcement, although the courts have imposed some limits to this under the Fourth Amendment.
Checking immigration status by local or state agents is deeply problematic for a number of reasons. To start, such practices are frequently a result of illegal racial and ethnic profiling, and are the first step for local agents with animosity against immigrants to abuse their authority and detain the person for ICE. Further, such information may be used against the person by the federal government or private actors, and is frequently entered into data systems that collect and sell such personal information. Finally, immigration status is extremely complex and fluid, and local or state actors do not have the expertise necessary to analyze it.
B. Resources for immigration enforcement
Some states enact general policies to prohibit the use of state and local resources in assisting with immigration enforcement. These prohibitions often focus on preserving state and local resources for their own priorities and drawing a clear line between their agencies and federal immigration authorities. A broad prohibition on the use of resources can cover multiple agencies and issues without foreseeing every possible future action and specifically addressing them all. Anti-sanctuary policies often restrict localities’ ability to prohibit the use of local resources for immigration enforcement and/or try to essentially force localities to use their resources to carry out such enforcement.
C. Transparency & Accountability
This category covers laws that promote or undermine transparency about immigration enforcement activity, and laws that give people a way to hold state or local agents accountable for unconstitutional conduct connected to immigration enforcement. It combines three protective elements and two harmful elements; states are scored based on which are present.
Protective elements (any of):
- Reporting and disclosure rules. State statutes that require transparency in how and why local and state agencies interact with federal immigration authorities or use resources to facilitate immigration enforcement, for example by requiring agencies to document and report on immigration status inquiries or assistance provided to federal agents.
- State civil rights damages laws (sometimes called "state Bivens" laws). A growing number of states let people sue state, local, and in some cases federal officers for money damages when those officers violate their constitutional rights. These laws fill a gap left by federal law: the U.S. Supreme Court has sharply narrowed the ability to sue federal officers directly, most recently in Egbert v. Boule (2022), so states have stepped in with their own versions. States with such laws include California (Bane Act), Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, and New York.
- Law enforcement mask and identification requirements. A new generation of state laws restricts law enforcement officers’ use of face coverings and may require visible identification during enforcement encounters, a direct response to federal officers increasingly conducting operations masked and unidentifiable. States with such laws include Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington.
Harmful elements (any of):
- Criminalization of "interference." Some states have made it a crime to interfere with, hinder, or obstruct federal immigration enforcement. Louisiana’s SB 15 / Act 399 (2025) is an example. These laws can also be used against protesters and neighbors trying to protect each other from ICE.
- Criminalization of public disclosure of immigration enforcement records. Some states have made it a crime for public employees to disclose information about state immigration enforcement activity, even where disclosure would serve the public interest. Tennessee’s SB 1464 / HB 2506 (2026) criminalizes negligent release of certain records as a felony.
D. Infosharing
ICE regularly requests that local jails provide various types of information on the people in their custody, such as their place of birth, work or home address information, and when they will be released. Beyond the criminal legal system, ICE seeks access to other state and local databases and records, such as DMV records. Some states provide for confidentiality and protection of records or information collected by state and local government involving any personal or sensitive information, including information related to immigration status or criminal case status. Broad confidentiality policies can protect immigration information from being shared with ICE and used to find or deport residents. Sanctuary policies may also terminate ICE’s access to state and local databases that may have information that could be used to target and deport immigrants. This includes state databases like motor vehicle records, local criminal legal case management data systems, or systems of records collected by various local agencies. Protecting local information enables immigrants to feel safer sharing their information with local government. Furthermore, as databases and information sharing have become widespread, allowing ICE access to this information may undermine many of the other policy efforts discussed in this resource. Anti-sanctuary policies tend to do the opposite: requiring state and local databases to be open to ICE and/or limiting restrictions that locality can put in place on such information sharing. In particular, many state statutes replicate 8 U.S.C. § 1373, declaring that localities may not limit communicating with federal agencies about citizenship or immigration status.
E. Broad restrictions on sanctuary policies
Some states have more general policies prohibiting any of their localities from enacting or enforcing any sanctuary policies. These prohibitions undermine determinations made by local jurisdictions about how best to keep their communities safe and best use their resources. While several states proscribe specific types of sanctuary policies, some have sweeping bans that prohibit any kind of limitation on immigration enforcement.
This category specifically measures whether a state bans its localities from having sanctuary policies; it does not measure whether the state itself has a strong sanctuary law. A state with excellent protective laws of its own will typically score N/A here, since its protections are scored individually under the other, more specific categories above.
II. Jail-to-ICE Transfers
A. ICE detainers
Over the last fifteen years, ICE detainers (aka ICE holds) have fueled the highest numbers of deportations in American history. ICE uses detainers to ask local jails to hold immigrants even after they are supposed to be released under state law, so that ICE can take them into custody. ICE does not reimburse jails for the cost of this detention. Federal courts and even ICE have acknowledged that compliance with ICE holds is voluntary. Moreover, courts have ruled that detention on an ICE detainer is unconstitutional, that ICE holds are not enforceable warrants, and that they exceed ICE’s own legal authority as well as the authority of local agencies to detain someone.
Some sanctuary laws make clear that local law enforcement should not detain immigrants beyond when they should otherwise be released based on a detainer. Anti-sanctuary policies mandate compliance with detainers, or prevent localities from establishing any policy limiting responses to ICE detainers. These laws require localities to accept ICE detainers and provide free holding cells for ICE, risking liability for unlawful detention, simply on the basis of a detainer request.
B. Notice of Release
An ICE detainer not only requests prolonged detention of a person, but advance notice to ICE of when that person will be released, so that ICE can be there to take custody. Especially where a county will not prolong detention based on ICE detainers, ICE wants local officials to provide ICE with advance notice when immigrants will be released from custody, so that ICE agents can be present and complete the transfer right at that time. The result is virtually the same as the ICE hold: a person is transferred directly from local custody to ICE, making the local jurisdiction an active accomplice to deportations. Like most other ways that county jails facilitate deportations, sharing residents’ information with ICE and notifying them of individuals’ cases contributes to the perception that any encounter with local law enforcement is a direct threat. Sanctuary policies limit whether jails can respond to detainers with information about release dates, while anti-sanctuary policies require that this information be shared.
C. ICE in jails
ICE agents physically work in many local jails. Jails may voluntarily provide them free office space or a dedicated workstation, access to the local jail databases, booking lists of all the individuals in custody, access to inmates for interrogations about their immigration status, and more. Some sanctuary policies prevent ICE access to jail databases or maintaining desks or offices of their own within the local jail.
D. Restriction of ICE interviews
ICE uses access to local jails to interrogate individuals about their immigration history, get admissions of lack of status, or coerce them into giving up their case. This is among the more harmful forms of assistance that jails offer, as immigrants and their information are exposed to ICE without any of the protections in the criminal legal system (i.e. no Miranda rights, no public defender, etc.). This kind of operational intertwinement further blurs the lines between local law enforcement and ICE and undermines immigrants’ access to equal treatment in the criminal legal system. Sanctuary policies either prohibit these interactions or limit them to situations where individuals have been given notice of their rights and consent to be interviewed by ICE. Anti-sanctuary policies often allow full access, with ICE officials sometimes not even announcing who they are or why they are there before interrogating someone.
III. Patrol Officer Collusion w/ ICE
A. Joint operations with ICE
Different law enforcement agencies frequently join together for specific projects or joint task forces, including DHS agents. Some sanctuary policies specifically prohibit local officers from participating in joint task forces with ICE. These provisions are important guidance to local officers that they should not be collaborating on immigration enforcement. Like directives not to inquire into immigration status, prohibitions on joint task forces can help to limit and discourage discrimination and profiling against immigrant communities. Anti-sanctuary policies sometimes require full cooperation with ICE task forces, and run the risk of conflating local law enforcement operations with deportation operations.
B. Probation/courts working with ICE
Probation and court officers sometimes report people to ICE or work with ICE to arrest people at their probation appointments or at court. Probation and parole departments supervise many people who have been released from criminal custody, often for years after the case was brought in court. When these agencies allow ICE to arrest people at their court or probation appointments, they are forcing immigrants to risk deportation in order to comply with the law. Some states have passed protections preventing probation departments from sharing appointment and other information with ICE. Some policies have also protected individuals attending court from a civil arrest at or on their way to a courthouse without a judicial warrant.
C. ID restrictions
Individuals must often present identification in interactions with local law enforcement, as well as to access services, etc. Some localities have created forms of identification that are more accessible to individuals who may have difficulty getting identification, including undocumented individuals. Consular identification is another form of identification that may be used in these situations. Anti-sanctuary policies often restrict the use of identification that is not “state-approved,” sometimes specifically naming consular identification or municipal IDs.
Like Broad Restrictions on Sanctuary Policies (Category I.E), this category is defined around a specific anti-sanctuary provision (a state restricting the use of non-state-issued ID) rather than a general measure of whether a state protects ID access. See Methodology Rule 5.
D. 287(g)
Under a 287(g) agreement, a local jurisdiction enters into an agreement with ICE to have some officers deputized with authority to enforce immigration laws. In practice, this means that local deputies will be responsible for interrogating people about their immigration history, investigating them in federal databases, issuing detainers, and referring people to ICE for removal proceedings. Predictably, the 287(g) program has been rife with issues of racial profiling and abuse of authority. Various states have prohibited local agencies from joining 287(g) agreements. In contrast, other states have mandated that localities enter into 287(g) agreements.
IV. Contracts with ICE or CBP
A. Private prison contracts for ICE
ICE may enter into contracts with private prison corporations to jail immigrants who are facing deportation. Sometimes this is a three-way contract with a county/city and private facility, where the county or city will then subcontract with the private corporation. In other instances, ICE may enter into the contract directly with the private corporation. When private prison corporations are involved in the jailing of people, they prioritize profits over human lives. Some legislatures have explicitly ended or significantly restricted these contracts from operating in the state. A handful of these bans have themselves become the subject of litigation; where a court has narrowed or struck down part of a ban, that is reflected as a rating adjustment rather than a change to this description (see Methodology Rule 3).
B. Public jail contracts for ICE
A public ICE detention contract, also called IGSA (Intergovernmental Service Agreement), is a contract between a local government and the federal government that allows ICE to rent bed space from local jails to detain immigrants in deportation proceedings. These contracts mean that local jails are literally profiting from the business of deportation, because ICE pays the jail money to keep an immigrant detained there. This can also create an incentive for the sheriff’s department to encourage arrests of immigrants who will then be turned over to ICE and held in that rented jail bed. Further, when a jail has contracted to enter into this type of business with ICE, ICE agents regularly enter the jail and there may be increased information-sharing with ICE regarding inmates not in ICE custody. These issues are not lost on the immigrant community, who see that their local officers work closely with ICE and that immigrants who come into contact with local police may be at risk. As a result, some state laws have explicitly ended or significantly restricted their jails from entering or expanding these contracts.
V. State Criminalization Laws
A. Crime of Illegal Entry or Reentry
Some states have created new crimes of illegal entry into the state or illegal reentry into the state. These offenses, by definition, only apply to the behavior of immigrants and can only be committed by immigrants. An immigrant who enters, attempts to enter, or is found within the state after being denied admission to, or after being removed or deported from, the United States can thus be prosecuted in state courts. These crimes have been classified as misdemeanors, aggravated misdemeanors, or felonies with aggravating circumstances present (such as the new crime being committed after removal caused by certain types of felony convictions). This means that local police can arrest, prosecute, and imprison an undocumented immigrant simply for being present in the state, before or in addition to any enforcement of immigration laws by federal authorities. Eleven states have now enacted some version of a state deportation-mechanism or presence-based crime under this and the following three categories: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Some remain blocked by court order (Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma); some have not yet taken effect because a condition written into the law itself has not been met (Louisiana, and Tennessee's reentry offense, which is contingent on the U.S. Supreme Court reversing its preemption ruling in Arizona v. United States); and several, including Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, are currently enforceable. Arizona's provisions took effect in mid-2026 after a statutory trigger tied to the Texas litigation fired; a new lawsuit seeking to enjoin them was filed shortly after and remains pending, with no ruling yet.
B. Crime of Unlawful Presence
Similar to unlawful entry or reentry, some states created new crimes of unlawful presence or impermissible occupation, which makes entering and remaining within a state without having legal authorization to enter the United States a misdemeanor or a felony. This means that local police can arrest and prosecute an undocumented immigrant simply for being present in the state, before or in addition to any enforcement of immigration laws by federal authorities. See the current operability breakdown under Illegal Entry/Reentry above; several states' unlawful-presence provisions, including registration-carrying offenses in Alabama and South Carolina, fall under this same category.
C. State Deportation Order
Although immigration proceedings are federal, some states have created new procedures for state ordered deportations. In these regimes, a state judge (not an immigration judge) may offer an immigrant a form of voluntary deportation at an early stage in the criminal case, or may enter a mandatory state deportation order. See the current operability breakdown under Illegal Entry/Reentry above; Arizona's and Mississippi's provisions are currently operative.
D. Crime of Refusal to Leave
States have made refusal to comply with a state deportation order a separate crime, to complement the creation of state deportation mechanisms. See the current operability breakdown under Illegal Entry/Reentry above; Arizona's provision is currently operative, and Tennessee's is contingent on a change in federal preemption law that has not yet occurred.
E. Criminal Law Enhancements Against Immigrants
Some states have enacted enhancements to existing criminal statutes that specifically increase penalties on crimes related to immigration, and on offenses that are largely only enforced against immigrants. These laws reclassify existing misdemeanors or felonies to garner harsher penalties for conduct such as “smuggling persons” even though these charges are applied to people who are simply driving undocumented passengers. Other laws have added new definitions to the text, such as a new definition for “transnational crime organization” in the larger context of the commission of a crime in furtherance of such an organization. In extreme cases like Texas, enhancements of criminal law include lengthy mandatory minimum prison sentences.
Methodology
Each of the 20 parameters is scored on a 1-5 scale: “1” (Harms) for the most harmful laws, “2” (Somewhat Harms) for laws that are harmful but narrower or partially mitigated, “3” (N/A) where a state has no legislation addressing that parameter, “4” (Somewhat Protects) for protective laws with meaningful carve-outs, and “5” (Protects) for the strongest protective laws. Litigation matters to this scoring in both directions: a law that would otherwise score a “1” moves to a “2” where successful litigation has struck down or mitigated its harmful impact, and the same logic applies to protective laws narrowed by a court. A law that simply restates existing federal law, without adding a new state-level mandate, is generally scored a “2” rather than a “1,” since it does not independently expand harm beyond what federal law already requires. The six rules below are refinements of this basic framework, developed to keep judgment calls consistent across all 51 jurisdictions and across the different people who have worked on this map over time.
Rule 1: Enacted but not yet operative
Where a law has been enacted but has not yet taken effect, for example because it is contingent on a statutory trigger that hasn't fired or because a court has enjoined it, it is generally rated “somewhat” rather than at the full extreme (Somewhat Harms rather than Harms, or the equivalent on the protective side). Once a trigger fires or an injunction is lifted and the law becomes genuinely operative, it moves to the full rating. This is why, for instance, Arizona's Prop 314 crime and deportation-order provisions moved from Somewhat Harms to Harms in this update cycle: a 60-day statutory trigger fired and the provisions took effect, even though a new lawsuit seeking to enjoin them was filed shortly after (with no ruling yet).
A related nuance: some triggers are themselves litigation outcomes. Louisiana’s SB 388 crimes, for example, are not enjoined by any pending case; the statute’s own text simply does not take effect until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a preemption question raised by similar state laws. No one has sued Louisiana over this provision, but the reason it is not yet operative is still litigation, just litigation happening elsewhere. States in this position are marked as impacted by litigation on the same basis as states with a direct injunction against their own law.
Rule 2: Standard carve-outs vs. specific carve-outs
Many protective laws include an exception preserving law enforcement's ordinary, non-immigration-related authority, for example allowing status inquiries “when connected to an investigation into a violation of state or local criminal law.” This kind of carve-out is common across many states' laws and doesn't meaningfully narrow the law's protective intent; it just clarifies that police can still investigate criminal violations. A carve-out like this does not, by itself, reduce a “Protects” rating to “Somewhat Protects.”
By contrast, a carve-out tied to something specific and substantive, such as particular offense categories (e.g., only applies except for people convicted of a felony), a contract's renewal or expansion terms, or a grandfather/sunset date, does narrow the protection in a meaningful way, and does support a “Somewhat Protects” rating.
Rule 3: Litigation as a narrowing factor in both directions
Litigation that enjoins or narrows a harmful law can move it from Harms toward Somewhat Harms (see Rule 1). The same logic applies on the protective side: if a court has struck down or narrowed part of a protective law, that can justify a “Somewhat Protects” rating even where the statute's text reads as unconditional. For example, New Jersey's ban on private immigration-detention contracts was struck down by the Third Circuit in July 2025 (CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of New Jersey), on the theory that a state can’t use this kind of ban to reach a federal contractor, so that specific provision is rated Somewhat Protects, even though the underlying statutory text itself has no carve-out. Notably, that same ruling did not affect New Jersey's separate ban on state/local government contracts, which is rated on its own, separate merits (a grandfather clause for pre-existing contracts means it is rated Somewhat Protects).
A narrower but related question is what to do when litigation carves a specific group out of a law’s coverage without eliminating the law’s effect more broadly. Here the distinction is between litigation that eliminates a provision’s effect for its stated purpose (CoreCivic, above) and litigation that narrows a law’s reach to exclude one class of subject while leaving it fully operative for everyone else. Only the former removes credit for the underlying protective element. For example, both California and Virginia enacted laws requiring law enforcement officers to display identification and, in California’s case, restricting face coverings. Litigation has enjoined both states’ laws specifically as applied to federal officers, but both remain fully enforceable against state and local officers. Because meaningful coverage remains, this litigation does not remove credit for the mask/ID element in either state’s Transparency & Accountability score.
Rule 4: Executive orders count only when they carry the force of law statewide
The map's focus is on state legislation rather than executive orders, but there are a small number of documented exceptions where a state's constitutional or statutory structure gives an executive directive the practical force of legislation statewide: Rhode Island's Governor's Executive Order directing the state's unified Department of Corrections (which operates the state's only jail and prison), and Massachusetts's Executive Order 650, signed by Governor Healey in January 2026 and amended by EO 655 in March 2026, which directly restricts state facility access and 287(g) agreements on a statewide footing. New Jersey's Attorney General Immigrant Trust Directive was previously included on this same basis, but New Jersey is now scored on its 2026 codifying statute instead.
Rule 5: Categories that measure only one direction
Two categories, “Broad restrictions on sanctuary policies” and “ID restrictions,” are defined around a specific kind of anti-sanctuary provision (a state banning its localities from having sanctuary policies at all, or restricting the use of non-state-issued ID). A state with strong protective laws will correctly show N/A for these categories if it doesn't have this specific kind of ban; that isn't a gap; the substance of its protections is captured under the other, more specific categories (Immigration Status Checks, Infosharing, ICE Detainers, etc.).
Rule 6: Overlap between categories is acceptable where a provision genuinely spans more than one
Where a single statutory provision is broad enough to independently support two categories, for example a sweeping “shall not restrict cooperation with federal immigration enforcement in any way” clause that fits both “Resources for immigration enforcement” and “Broad restrictions on sanctuary policies”, it can be scored under both rather than picked apart to avoid any overlap. For the most part, however, we avoid counting individual provisions in multiple categories, and endeavor to evaluate the laws based on the stated and intended functions and outcomes, rather than clause by clause.