Democrats’ bill

or hinders enforcement.”

Baltimore, which expects to receive about $169 million in federal grant funding this fiscal year, has two policies that address undocumented immigrants directly: an executive order signed in 2012 by thenMayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and a state policy that dictates procedures at the Baltimore jail.

Rawlings-Blake’s order prohibited city police officers from questioning suspects about their immigration status. But most officers, even before the order, had limited authority to address immigration. Most immigration violations are civil, not criminal matters, and they are supposed to be enforced by federal, not local officers.

The Supreme Court upheld that interpretation in 2012, ruling that police may ask for immigration documents when interacting with a suspect on some other matter, such as a traffic stop, but may not arrest or detain that person for an extended period of time. federal law intended to ensure communication between federal and local governments about residents’ citizenship status.

The law bars cities from adopting any policy or ordinance to restrict city workers from exchanging information with the federal government about a resident’s legal status.

“It’s about communication, not about holding people or arresting people or detaining people,” said Lena Graber, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Nothing in Baltimore’s order or the state policy limits communication with federal agencies.

Maryland, unlike some jurisdictions, alerts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before the Baltimore jail releases a suspect in which the agency has expressed an interest.

If federal agents want that immigrant, they need only to be at the jail when he or she is released.

Even if the state declined to provide that information, it is not clear it would be breaking the law.

The Steinle family sued San Francisco last year, arguing in part that the city violated the 1996 law because it declined to notify ICE when it released the immigrant accused of killing her.

A U.S. District Court in California disagreed, ruling that the law did not require such notification.

Other parts in the Steinle lawsuit are proceeding.

Despite impassioned debate on the issue nationally and locally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement made only 25 detention requests at the Baltimore jail last year, according to a spokesman with the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Spokesman Gerard Shields said the office of state Attorney General Brian E. Frosh reviewed Trump’s executive order and determined that no changes were required to Maryland’s procedure for handling those requests.

Shields said that assessment was communicated verbally to the department.

A spokeswoman for Frosh confirmed the review, but declined to discuss its findings.

A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh declined to discuss whether the city had conducted a similar review.

Another provision of the president’s executive order gives the Department of

Democratic members of the General Assembly, meanwhile, are supporting a bill this year to curtail state and local cooperation with federal immigration authorities further.

The bill would forbid corrections officials from detaining immigrants at the request of the ICE and would bar law enforcement from providing nonpublic information about undocumented immigrants, including the timing of an immigrant's release from jail.

Without addressing that legislation directly, Hogan said his administration would comply with federal law when it came to sanctuaries.

“I do know that there’s some talk here about we’re going to ignore federal law, and regardless of what your position is on this issue, when you take an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, you don’t really get to pick and choose which ones,” Hogan told WBAL's “C4 Show” on Friday.

Advocates say that the state can comply with federal law and continue to embrace sanctuary policies, as the Hogan administration is doing in Baltimore’s jail.

“We are certain that the executive order does not speak directly to our current state and local policy,” said Kim Propeack, political director at the immigrant advocacy group CASA.

“We are confident that any attempt to cut funding will be found, like so many Trump initiatives, to be illegal and unconstitutional.”