Voters Oust Notorious Pro-ICE Sheriff in Maryland

Chuck Jenkins, the notoriously anti-immigrant Maryland sheriff who boasts of having helped deport 2,000 people, was wiped out in Tuesday’s blue wave.

Voters in Frederick County, a fast-growing and increasingly liberal area north of Washington, D.C., denied his bid for a sixth term. They opted for his opponent, Democrat Karl Bickel, by a margin of 56 to 44 percent. 

César Díaz, president of the city council in Frederick, which is the county’s largest city, called Jenkins’s defeat “a repudiation of evil.”

“He is the face here of cruel, inhumane federal policy,” Díaz told Bolts late Tuesday. “Everybody knows somebody, or knows somebody who knows somebody, who’s been directly affected (by ICE). He’s proud of being the face of that, and people have had enough.”

Jenkins, 70, gained national fame for his staunch support of ICE, often appearing on Fox News and visiting with Donald Trump at both the White House and Mar-a-Lago. He joined ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local officials to act on the agency’s behalf, in 2008, long before the program exploded in popularity among conservative sheriffs. He was an early backer of President Donald Trump, and vowed, during Trump’s first run for office, “As long as I am sheriff of Frederick County, we are going to work with ICE.” 

Bickel, who is 76 and worked in the sheriff’s office in the 1990s, and who had run and lost against Jenkins in each of the previous three cycles, has vowed not to collaborate with ICE and says he plans to dispatch his deputies to monitor ICE activity in the county. “A lot of what ICE is doing, if a deputy did it they’d be fired or arrested,” Bickel told Bolts in August. “The use of force, the utilization of chemical agents, things like that. It’s just not right.”

In a brief text exchange Wednesday morning, Bickel said, “Now the real work begins.” Jenkins did not respond to a request for comment.

Ahead of the election, Bolts spoke with many immigrants in the county who said Jenkins has, since his first election in 2006, created a culture of fear in Frederick County, which is home to a large Latino population. 

Some immigrants told Bolts they’ve been living in hiding lately, frequently unable to work and sometimes unable to obtain food and other basic needs as a result. Many have kept their children out of school and seen family members deported.

“We’re excited. We’re really excited,” one immigrant from El Salvador said of the election result. His stepfather was deported under Jenkins’ 287(g) program, and Bolts is not identifying him by name because he, too, is vulnerable to deportation. 

“With him out of his position, Frederick will change for the better,” the man added. “What happened with my stepdad—it was because of policies like his. With him out of office, I hope it will change.”

Jenkins’ defeat speaks both to Frederick County’s changing demographics and to a huge amount of organizing in recent years by immigrant rights activists in the county and throughout Maryland. This coalition successfully lobbied the state legislature to ban 287(g) partnerships earlier this year and to install other immigrant protections—changes Jenkins and 16 other Maryland sheriffs vigorously opposed and sued to prevent. 

Of these 17 sheriffs, most were running for reelection unopposed on Tuesday. That lack of competition is quite common across the country, as sheriffs frequently face no challengers, even in some places that are otherwise quite politically competitive.

This year’s blue wave did take out at least one other sheriff famous for harsh policing of immigrants: Republican Terry Johnson, of Alamance County, North Carolina, who faced a federal investigation for his profiling of Latinos, was denied a seventh term in office, losing narrowly to Democratic pastor Shannon Long.

Díaz, the Frederick council president, cautioned that defeating people like Jenkins and Johnson does not alone assuage the fears of immigrants who are still living under the threat of ICE.

“The community is under attack from more than just Chuck Jenkins,” he said. “But that fear did go down a tick after 287(g) was banned. Now Jenkins is gone, and the fear goes down another tick.”