Montgomery County Council members introduced two bills Tuesday to limit how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts detentions and deportations within the county’s borders.

“We can’t make ICE agents operate lawfully,” District 5 council member Kristin Mink said at a press conference in Rockville. “What we can do is employ the strongest possible protocols at every facility the county owns or operates and fully train our staff to respond to emergencies.”

The County Values Act, sponsored by Mink, would require a judicial warrant for ICE to access nonpublic areas of county facilities. It would also prohibit the use of county-owned parking lots, garages and vacant lots for immigration enforcement.

The Unmask ICE Act, sponsored by at-large council member Will Jawando, would prohibit federal, state and local law enforcement from wearing masks on the job — with some exceptions, such as medical masks to protect public health.

Mink and Jawando acknowledged that the county does not have authority over ICE and that the agency could challenge their legislation.

“If we get sued, we get sued, but we’re doing the right thing,” Jawando said.

ICE encounters

Council members and county residents Tuesday recounted personal experiences with ICE from the past few months.

Mink said she recently watched the detention of a teenage boy, whose father had just been detained, in the Hillandale neighborhood of Silver Spring. Wearing pajamas in the cold, the boy showed ICE agents proof of his citizenship, but they were not interested, she said.

She said she told agents that she is a council member and tried to intervene.

“The majority of them, masked, simply turned away,” she said. “This bill will make it clear: not in our parking lots, not in our garages ... anywhere that the county has control, we are drawing a hard line.”

Jawando shared the story of a county resident who was detained while walking his dog in Gaithersburg and sent to a detention center in Texas for 77 days.

“No warning, no goodbyes, gone,” said Jawando, who compared ICE’s masking to the Ku Klux Klan’s.

Amos Fon, a county resident who immigrated from Cameroon, said he knows people who are afraid to go to church or the grocery store because of ICE.

“Fear does not end when we arrive in the United States,” he said. “It shows up in racial profiling, in being targeted, and in immigration enforcement that treats us as threats instead of human beings.”

And Jariane Martinez Mapp, a student at Seneca Valley High School, shared the story of a friend who was detained by ICE outside the school. She said many of her classes have empty desks because some students are scared to go to school.

“The presence of ICE near our schools, our supposed safe spaces, creates fear that impacts our learning,” she said.

Community Trust Act

Mink’s and Jawando’s bills come on the heels of a packed hearing last week to support the Trust Act, which would make it harder for federal immigration agents to detain and deport county residents.

Last year, the council passed legislation extending U visa eligibility, in an attempt to strengthen protections for undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crime.

Dates have not yet been set for hearings or votes on the bills introduced Tuesday.