Updated September 6, 2026
Although immigration law is federal law, administered by federal agencies, it is state laws and state-powered machinery that drive immigration enforcement. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is automatically notified of every person taken into custody across the country, no matter on what basis, or pretext, they were arrested. This gives local law enforcement tremendous power over immigration enforcement; they decide whom to stop and arrest in the first place. For most of the last decade, roughly 70-75% of ICE’s interior arrests have come from local jails and state or federal prisons handing people directly to ICE, rather than from ICE agents making arrests out in the community on their own. It is therefore states, and their internal law enforcement and criminal legal systems, that power the mass detention and mass deportation system. Even states that limit their assistance to ICE still contribute to deportations.
A shift began in 2025: as ICE has sharply scaled up its own street and workplace arrests, arrests made directly by ICE agents in public now make up a larger share of the total than they used to. And whether or not local law enforcement are actively working with ICE, they are now also reckoning with a federal agency causing chaos and violence in their streets as well. But local jails and police stops remain the major pipeline into deportation, especially in states and localities that willingly collude with federal agents. Even as ICE arrests and detention surge to unprecedented levels, local assistance to ICE remains a critical engine of the system that DHS has built over the last two decades, and on which the administration's goals rest.
This map represents the degree to which state policies limit or expand their involvement in immigration enforcement, based on an analysis of current state laws. It reflects litigation impacting state laws, as well as our own expertise in interpreting the effects of state and local laws and policies relating to immigration enforcement. The map shows which states have gone the furthest in passing legislation that protects their communities, which have taken some steps, which have done nothing, which have prevented their localities from taking protective measures, and which have actively passed laws to collude with ICE in ways that significantly harm their residents.
Since Trump’s second inauguration, his administration has dedicated massive federal resources to rounding up and deporting immigrants, with militarized raids and sweeps in immigrant communities. The tactics have grown more extreme by the month. Federal agents, frequently masked and unidentifiable, have carried out arrests at courthouses, worksites, schools, and on residential streets, and have used force that has left people injured or dead. Although the administration has tried to blame its behavior on ‘sanctuary cities,’ these claims are baseless. Not only is DHS’ racist and violent approach to immigration raids unjustifiable in any context, in 2026 ICE killed a man in Houston, Texas, a state that has aggressively implemented policies to increase deportations and require local agencies to help ICE.
In response to this moment, several states have started passing laws that go beyond the traditional sanctuary framework: requiring immigration agents to show their faces and identify themselves, and creating state-law accountability remedies for people whose rights are violated by agents of any government, federal included. We cover these new categories of law in this update, and detail them further in the Appendix. Nonetheless, many “blue” states, including states with pro-immigrant state laws, still do not have meaningful safeguards against a virulently anti-immigrant federal administration. Although several states enacted new laws in 2026 in response to the rampages of the Trump administration, only a few states have comprehensive state laws restricting assistance in immigration enforcement. Other states have substantial limitations, but still affirmatively transfer many immigrants directly from state and local officials to immigration detention. Many regions of the country where popular opinion is generally supportive of immigrants are nonetheless operating local and state systems that contribute to mass detention and deportation on an every day basis.
Given what communities are living through right now, this map is a more urgent call to action than ever for elected officials who oppose the mass deportation agenda to take action and defend immigrant communities. Strong sanctuary policies work; that is why the federal government is consistently attacking them. But the details matter; without explicit limitations, most local law enforcement are still helping deport their own residents.
On the flip side, some states have aggressively expanded the mass deportation engine with their own laws. Texas, for example, has converted substantial portions of its criminal legal system to primarily focus on immigration enforcement, while Florida has enrolled thousands of local agents into the 287(g) program. Texas, Florida, and other states have passed laws punishing their own localities for passing sanctuary policies and undermined the impact of these protective policies. Some have also passed even more expansive, discriminatory and harmful policies that attempt to force state and local law enforcement to essentially become a de facto arm of the federal detention and deportation system. Texas has pioneered new ways to weaponize their state criminal laws against immigrants. While some aspects of these policies have been struck down by federal courts and many are currently being litigated, others remain. These states and their anti-immigrant political agendas have been further empowered under the current administration.
Explanation of Methodology and Legend
For this map, we analyzed 50 states and the District of Columbia for state sanctuary-related laws across 20 parameters. These include news laws passed this year as well as others in effect, some of which were enacted many years ago. The parameters we reviewed fell into five general categories: information and resource sharing with ICE, jail-to-ICE transfers, patrol officer collusion with ICE, contracts with ICE or U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and state criminalization laws. For explanation of these categories and the individual parameters, see the Appendix. States were given a numerical score ranging from 1-5 for each parameter, with “1” the most harmful and “5” the most protective. We also analyzed how litigation has changed the impact of state legislation. States that had passed laws that would have given them a score of “1” for most harmful were changed to “2” or somewhat harmful where successful litigation resulted in striking down or mitigating the harmful impact of the legislation. Where state laws simply reiterated federal laws that harm immigrants, we also gave them a “2” or somewhat harmful designation. We also distinguish between state laws that require affirmative participation in immigration enforcement from those that preempt local sanctuary policies but do not mandate particular action. On the pro-sanctuary side, states that passed strong protective policies were given a “5” as most protective; those that had significant carve-outs or exceptions to these policies were given a “4” as somewhat protective. States that have no legislation or didn’t address a specific parameter were given a not applicable (“n/a”) score of “3”.
When averaged across all the parameters, two states again have particularly strong and comprehensive laws protecting immigrants, and fall into the most protective category: Illinois and Oregon. Six other states now have broad sanctuary protections: California, Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington. Seven states have enacted meaningful, if more limited, protections against involvement in immigration enforcement: Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia. An additional five states, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, and Rhode Island, have taken smaller steps toward reducing immigration enforcement. Six states have not enacted any law addressing immigration enforcement one way or the other: Alaska, Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
On the other side, nine states have enacted laws mandating some level of participation in immigration enforcement by local agencies or banning certain sanctuary policies: Kansas, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Six states have broad anti-sanctuary laws with significant negative effects for their immigrant residents: Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Eight states have fairly comprehensive anti-immigrant laws that force local agencies to be significantly involved in deporting their constituents: Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, West Virginia. Two states, Texas and Florida, have enacted the most far-reaching laws to commit their local and state resources to immigration enforcement. Although a number of these laws have been sharply limited by federal court decisions, many of their impacts remain in effect.
The wave of state deportation mechanisms and state criminal laws applied entirely to being an undocumented immigrant present in or entering a state, which we first flagged in 2024, has continued to grow, and the legal picture is now considerably more mixed. Eleven states have enacted these state criminalization laws: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Some remain blocked by court order (Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, and Oklahoma); some have not yet taken effect because a condition written into the law itself has not been met (Louisiana and Tennessee); and several -- Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas among them -- are currently enforceable, whether because courts allowed them to take effect, no one has yet challenged them, or a past settlement narrowed but did not block them. Arizona's crime and removal-order provisions, notably, 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. See the Appendix for the current litigation status of each law as of July 2026.
Which Laws are Reflected in the Map
The focus of this map is on state legislation, rather than executive orders, court decisions unrelated to state laws, or other non-legislative policies. We currently make two exceptions. Rhode Island operates a unified correctional system whereby the Governor's Executive Order directing its Department of Corrections impacts the only jail and prison in the state and is treated as akin to legislation. Massachusetts's Executive Order 650, signed by Governor Healey in January 2026 and amended by EO 655 in March 2026, functions as statewide policy and is treated the same way. 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.
The map does not include or analyze immigration-related state laws that are not focused on immigration enforcement, such as funds for immigration legal services, access to drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants, in-state tuition for undocumented students, state benefits afforded to immigrants, etc.
The Impacts of State Immigration Laws
The different state law regimes can determine results in real people’s lives, but they are just a rough approximation that does not speak to the broader impacts of these policies, nor to how carefully the laws are actually followed. Overpolicing of communities of color and vulnerable populations undermines safety for immigrants in sanctuary and non-sanctuary jurisdictions alike. But when local law enforcement agencies are not involved in deportations, immigrant communities are better integrated, more secure, and more involved. Their children are less likely to live in fear of losing a parent, mental health is improved, and access to justice is protected, while crime rates continue to fall. Until our federal lawmakers gather the political will to end the tyranny of our detention and deportation machine, the ILRC will continue to advise advocates, law enforcement, and elected officials across the nation on how to enact and improve sanctuary policies to protect our communities.
Further Background
Local involvement in immigration enforcement makes local agencies the gateway to deportation, co-opts local resources into questionable, racially discriminatory purposes, strips communities of any sense of safety, and undermines the rule of law.
There is no federal legal obligation for state and local jurisdictions to use their resources to help with immigration enforcement. But historically police and sheriff’s departments have often voluntarily assisted ICE, without even considering the legality or ramifications of their actions. Following widespread advocacy and federal court rulings that ICE detainers (requests to have an individual held for transfer directly from local custody to immigration detention) are unconstitutional, hundreds of counties and cities stopped complying with these requests. And many have gone much further in shielding their local resources from entanglement in immigration enforcement. However, the majority of counties have still not caught on to the legal jeopardy they face by complying with ICE detainers, nor recognized the horrific implications for their immigrant residents. ILRC maintains a map of county-level policies on involvement with ICE as of 2019 here: www.ilrc.org/local-enforcement-map.
Amidst the controversy over Secure Communities and the refusal of many localities to transfer their residents to ICE, some politicians and pundits began using sanctuary policies as a scapegoat for all of society’s ills. Attacking sanctuary policies has remained a cornerstone of the president’s political coalition and a key domestic policy priority for his administration since his first term. Arizona and a few other copycat states were early movers, passing expansive “show me your papers” anti-sanctuary legislation that essentially forced state and local law enforcement to act as an arm of federal immigration enforcement, which even the federal government opposed at the time. While the Supreme Court and other federal courts have struck down many of the unconstitutional aspects of these laws, other insidious provisions remained. Since then, successive waves of anti-sanctuary legislation have skirted the provisions originally struck down by the courts, while adding new harmful measures restricting localities from passing sanctuary policies and increasing other aspects of collusion between state and local law enforcement and ICE.
At the same time, states like California and Washington led the way on enacting protective laws, and Illinois, Maine, and Oregon have since shown what truly expansive protective policies can offer their residents. At the ILRC, we have seen tremendous success of sanctuary policies that disentangle local law enforcement from ICE, and we continue to craft, support, and advocate for those initiatives nationwide.
For press inquiries about this map, ILRC’s reports on sanctuary policies, or other ILRC information about immigration enforcement, contact Donna De La Cruz at media@ilrc.org. For more information about data underlying the map or assistance in starting a local campaign or joining national efforts, contact Lena Graber at lgraber@ilrc.org.
Additional Resources
For information on policies specific to local entanglement with ICE, see our map. For more details about policies regarding immigration enforcement and analysis of what our maps mean, see our reports reviewing the nature and expansion of sanctuary policies across the country: Growing the Resistance (2019); The Rise of Sanctuary (2018); and Searching for Sanctuary (2017).
This map was created with the support of Just Counsel, LLC.