Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins plans to keep working with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, regardless of the national uproar over the fatal shooting of a Minnesota woman by an ICE agent, subsequent protests nationwide and criticism from local leaders.

“They have a job to do,” Jenkins said during a news conference after filing for reelection Wednesday morning.

“They’re good men and women that, again, have a job to do to protect this country, and I, as a sheriff, I believe I have an obligation to support them to the extent I can.”

Jenkins, 69, is a Republican in an increasingly Democratic county. He said he’d go to court if Maryland legislators vote to ban cooperation agreements between local law enforcement and ICE.

A bill to outlaw such arrangements, called 287(g) agreements, failed last year in the Maryland Senate. In Frederick County, where the sheriff’s office is the primary law enforcement, the pacts mean people brought into the Frederick Detention Center can be questioned by specially trained corrections officers to ascertain their immigration status.

If the person does not have proper documentation, ICE can ask Frederick County officials to hold them for up to 48 hours beyond when they would have been released.

Jenkins said nothing law enforcement does on Frederick County streets has to do with immigration enforcement.

In the 18 or so years the cooperative arrangement has been in place, Jenkins said, immigration officials have “removed” more than 1,800 people.

“Now think about that. If those 1,882 criminals were on the streets, you’d be seeing street apprehensions,” he said. “People don’t realize how good we have it here.”

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said in November that a ban on such agreements would be "the first order of business" when the General Assembly reconvenes.

Jenkins said he would “fight” to make sure the legislature doesn’t pass such a law, including rallying support from other sheriffs, police chiefs and law enforcement organizations.

The sheriff’s vow comes as a number of Maryland residents have become ensnared in ICE’s web. Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national and Beltsville resident, has been battling for his freedom since he was erroneously deported to El Salvador in March.

Last week, ICE officials revised their account of what happened during a Christmas Eve shooting in Glen Burnie. Initially, the agency said two men were in a vehicle that rammed an ICE vehicle and tried to run agents over. ICE agents shot the driver. After local police disputed that account, the federal agency said the other man, who suffered whiplash, was in ICE custody in another vehicle at the time of the shooting.

ICE enforcement was the subject of a protest last weekend in Frederick — as it was across the state and country.

Despite protesters’ calls to keep ICE out of Frederick, Jenkins said, “We’re not going to keep ICE out of anywhere.”

“Be careful what you ask for, because we’re not seeing the problems in this county that other counties and other jurisdictions might be seeing, as far as ICE apprehensions on the street,” Jenkins said. “We don’t do that here, simply because of the 287(g) program.”

The sheriff’s job

Jenkins is arguably Maryland’s most powerful sheriff. Frederick County does not have its own police department. It’s the state’s largest jurisdiction where the primary law enforcement agency does not report to an elected county executive.

Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard and Montgomery counties have police departments that handle most law enforcement. In those jurisdictions, the sheriff’s office is responsible for duties such as providing security in courthouses and performing evictions. In Frederick, sheriff’s deputies do that work, in addition to traditional police work such as responding to calls about crime and conducting traffic stops.

Frederick County has a county executive, but when it switched to a charter form of government in 2014 after voters approved the change two years prior, it did not establish a police department. (The city of Frederick has its own police department. The city accounts for about 30% of the county’s population, according to 2024 Census estimates.)

Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater does not often speak out about Jenkins. But she decried the recent killing of the Minnesota woman, Renee Nicole Good, in a Facebook post from her campaign account. In 2020, when she was a member of the County Council, she said the county “has a racism problem” in a post about its 287(g) program.

“There’s no way to talk about the impact of his [Jenkins’] immigration enforcement program in our community without tackling the underlying issues of racial injustice,” she wrote.

A spokesperson for Fitzwater said the county executive was tied up in Annapolis all day with the start of the legislative session and likely would not be able to comment on Jenkins’ new run.

The sheriff’s bid for reelection

Jenkins has said previously he considers Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s “border czar,” a friend.

He introduced the 287(g) program in Frederick County in 2008. Harford County has had a program with ICE for eight years, and Cecil County has had one since at least 2020. Allegany, Carroll, Garrett, St. Mary’s and Washington counties signed agreements in 2025.

Jenkins was indicted in 2023 on federal conspiracy charges related to machine gun purchases, but the charges were dropped the following year. Jenkins reiterated Wednesday that he thinks those charges were politically motivated.

These and other critiques from the left are sure to be a knock against Jenkins in the election. Though he’s been elected every four years since 2006, his margins have shrunk dramatically.

He first won by more than 13,000 votes out of more than 70,000 cast and then ran unopposed in 2010. He won by more than 20,000 votes in 2014 — and then saw his margin drop to just 4,137 votes in 2018. In 2022, he won by fewer than 3,000.

Frederick County has been trending increasingly liberal, and Democrats are feeling optimistic about the 2026 elections, especially after big victories in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia in 2025.

Jenkins, talking about his reelection effort, said he considered running for county executive or Congress. But voters told him the county needs him as sheriff, Jenkins said.

“My goals have always been, do everything I can to make decisions, management decisions, decisions on policy, procedures that keep this county as safe as we can,” he said.

As of Tuesday, two candidates had filed to run for Frederick County sheriff: Jason Ciemielewski, a Democrat, and Gary Morton, a Republican. Morton filed in March and Ciemielewski last week.

Ciemielewski, 39, is a scientific researcher. He said he would put an end to the 287(g) program and bring a “compassionate civilian approach” to the leadership of the sheriff’s office.

Morton, 64, retired from the department in 2015 as a major. He said he would continue the 287(g) program but work to rebuild community trust in the sheriff’s office.

Morton said Jenkins’ indictment created a “cloud of distrust” over the agency.

According to the latest available numbers from the state, there are 9,745 more registered Democrats in Frederick County than registered Republicans.