Steve Burns
WMAL.com

ANNAPOLIS – (WMAL) The incident in which a 14-year-old girl was raped, allegedly by two students in the country illegally, may be weighing on proceedings in Annapolis. A bill to limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration officials is seeing changes that could be attributed to the uproar in the week since the incident.

The TRUST Act was passed this week in the Maryland House of Delegates, albeit watered down from its original version. A provision that would have ended immigration screenings at local jails was eliminated. The revised bill only allows individuals to be held in jail for immigration reasons if a judge signs off on it. Governor Larry Hogan has vowed to veto the bill, though the possibility of an override would be high.

It now heads to the Senate, which, while still controlled by a Democratic supermajority, is still slightly more conservative than the House, St. Mary’s College of Maryland political scientist Todd Eberly said.

“I think there will be ramifications from (the Rockville High School incident),” Eberly said. “Folks will at least be afraid of the perception that they’re voting for a measure that might protect those like the young men who brutalized that girl.”

While Eberly said that is not the intent of the bill, “in politics, perception has this way of becoming reality.”

The bill’s latest version still specifies that local law enforcement are not allowed to ask about immigration status and cannot collect immigration-related data.

While Annapolis has a long tradition of using multiple sessions to pass more controversial items, Eberly said Democrats have purposely been turning up the heat this session.

“Part of the agenda this session, I think, has been to find legislation that can cause showdowns with Governor Hogan,” Eberly said. “They want to have those contrasts to perhaps help the Democratic Party in 2018.”

As for the possibility of the Rockville incident spurring Republicans into action in ultra-blue Montgomery County, Eberly said they are not likely to gain much traction.

“Montgomery County has been pretty well gerrymandered to make sure there isn’t much that Republicans would ever be able to capitalize on.”

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