On November 10, the Montgomery County, Maryland, Council voted unanimously to bar anyone who worked for ICE or Customs and Border Protection after October 2025 from “sensitive” county jobs. The ban also reaches contractors and other federal employees assigned to support immigration enforcement. Some headlines call it a ban on government jobs, which overshoots, since the bill covers most county departments but only positions that deal with the public or control public resources. It still penalizes applicants for the agency on their résumé, with no finding that any of them did anything wrong.
I'm a husband, a father of three and a small business owner. I built what I have by showing up and answering for my results. I also graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, worked as a bodyguard, held a California EMT license and worked closely with law enforcement over the years. My son graduated from West Point and flies Army helicopters. My youngest brother is a retired Green Beret. I know what a federal oath costs, and I know a résumé line proves where someone worked and nothing about how they behaved.
Council member Kristin Mink says she drafted the bill to avoid violating the Constitution or employment discrimination laws, and an advocate told the Council that families have stopped coming to county food distributions out of fear. Any agent who breaks the law should answer for it like any other badge holder. DHS says the Council is “falsely casting federal law enforcement as villains.” Esther Wells, an immigrant and the Republican nominee for county executive, told the Council the two bills are “inconsistent, incoherent.” If someone is unfit, she asked, why screen? If screening works, why ban?
The bill asks where an applicant worked. It defines a restricted applicant as anyone employed by ICE or CBP on or after Oct. 1, 2025, with carve-outs for whistleblowers, people with six months or less of federal service, and CBP staff in trade, international relations and scientific and laboratory research. Mink said the cutoff matters because employees could see the administration directing actions that are unconstitutional and violent. That is a verdict on an administration, delivered to individuals who never got a hearing. In my expert witness work on fiduciary cases, I test whether a decision-maker applied a standard to the facts of one person's case. A résumé category skips that step entirely.
Flip the target. Picture a Texas county refusing to hire anyone who worked for the EPA since January of 2021. Progressives would call that McCarthyism, and they'd have a point. Hayek defined the rule of law as government “bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand.” Nobody who joined ICE after October of 2025 saw this coming. A rule aimed at whichever agency the majority dislikes this year is a grudge with a bill number. Other jurisdictions are copying the idea. Prince George's County passed a similar law in April.
Will it survive in court? Under rational basis review, courts give legislatures wide latitude even when a line is clumsy. In 1973, though, the Supreme Court held that “a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group” is no legitimate government interest, in a case about food stamps and hippie communes. In 2022, a unanimous Court in United States v. Washington struck down a state law that singled out federal contract workers. The county will reply that it's choosing its own workforce. Maryland employment lawyer Joyce Smithey told The Banner before the vote that prior employment isn't a protected class under Maryland employment law, yet she called the bill “really broad” and harder to defend than a narrower rule for police hiring. University of Maryland law professor Cori Alonso-Yoder calls the legal questions untested.
The county's own practices expose a double standard. Police recruits are automatically disqualified for felony convictions, a standard I support. The county's Ban the Box law limits when employers can ask about criminal history, so applicants get judged on relevant qualifications first. For covered jobs, a clean-record federal officer gets the closed door. That same Tuesday, the same Council passed Bill 38-26, which bans housing discrimination based on immigration status. Discrimination, it turns out, is evil until the target has a Border Patrol résumé.
Residents pay for this, too. As the Council weighed these proposals, Acting Police Chief Darren Francke said his department already faces a staffing shortage and wants to consider qualified applicants from broad backgrounds. Marcus Aurelius wrote that “that which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.” A hive that shrinks its own hiring pool by rule is working against itself, and taxpayers get the bill.
Montgomery County can protect trust without the résumé screen. Council member Evan Glass proposed extra background review for police applicants who worked at DHS since January of 2025, and a narrower bill of his would have disqualified police applicants who violated someone's constitutional rights while enforcing immigration law. That tests conduct. The Council also needs data. In July, a county spokesperson said the county does not track whether employees previously worked for ICE or CBP. A sunset date and an annual report would make the Council show results before the rule becomes permanent, and applicants should get a chance to answer for their own records.
The bill awaits the signature of outgoing County Executive Marc Elrich. Don't expect the ballot box to settle it. Will Jawando, who co-sponsored the bill, won the executive race over Wells by 57 points and succeeds the term-limited Elrich. The Council and its incoming executive can rewrite the bill around conduct. If they don't, the first qualified applicant turned away would hand a court a real person, a real job and a documented reason. Trust grows when a county holds every badge accountable, including the ones it dislikes. Hester Prynne's scarlet letter at least marked something she did. In Montgomery County, a résumé line now does the work of a rap sheet.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.
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