Committee reviews S.44 to keep governor approval for ICE MOUs, ACLU urges broader privacy and First Amendment protections

The Judiciary Committee reviewed S.44, a bill that would keep the governor as the sole state official who may authorize formal memoranda of understanding between state or local public agencies and federal immigration or customs authorities, but would remove a current emergency exception that can let local agencies enter such agreements during a declared state or national emergency.

"It's a 2 page bill," said Rick Segal, Office of Legislative Council, as he summarized the measure and its effect on the existing statute in Title 20. Segal said the bill "strikes out" the language that currently lets public agencies act without the governor's approval during a state or national emergency and clarifies that no public agency, officer, employee, agent or contractor may enter one of the covered agreements unless the governor has authorized it.

The nut graf: Supporters and committee members framed S.44 as a limited change meant to restore and clarify the 2017 law (Act 5) requiring executive review before a local law enforcement agency is deputized to carry out immigration or customs enforcement under federal statutes and programs. The ACLU of Vermont told the committee it supports the Senate's change and urged broader statutory limits on state information-sharing with federal authorities.

Falco Schilling, advocacy director for the ACLU of Vermont, told the committee, "We support S.44 and the changes to the underlying statute that were made in the Senate." Schilling urged the committee to extend existing state protections by prohibiting state agencies from sharing certain personally identifying information with federal authorities, especially information tied to constitutionally protected activities and to legally protected health care, including reproductive and gender-affirming care.

Committee discussion covered several technical and policy points. Segal told members the bill addresses two categories of federal authority: the deputization models commonly called "287(g)" agreements (federal-deputized local immigration enforcement) and customs-enforcement deputizations under another federal statutory provision the bill references. He noted three typical federal-local models: jail enforcement, task-force participation, and warrant-service officers, and said the bill applies only to formal MOUs that deputize local officers after ICE training.

Members debated whether to strike the emergency-exception subsection outright or to retain clarified language. Some committee members said removing subsection B entirely would be simpler; others said the committee had added the clarified text to avoid potential interim or informal agreements that local agencies might assert during an emergency. No final vote or floor action was recorded at the hearing; the committee adjourned to review additional proposed language.

The ACLU also proposed statutory language to expand the ban on creating registries and to add an executive-branch assessment procedure that would allow state agencies to determine whether particular information sharing is necessary to comply with federal law. Schilling said those proposed additions would explicitly protect information related to legally protected health care activities and to conduct protected by the First Amendment, and would bar state assistance to federal investigations or prosecutions that target individuals for exercising constitutional rights.

Law enforcement and some committee members raised concerns about operational impacts. One member said fair-and-impartial policing requirements already limit local cooperation with federal immigration activity and warned that additional restrictions could complicate routine mutual aid and responses when federal partners are relied upon for resources. Committee members said they plan to schedule law-enforcement testimony and to circulate any ACLU-proposed statutory text to members before further action.

There was no formal committee vote on S.44 during the session recorded in the transcript. The committee concluded the hearing by agreeing to reconvene with the proposed language and additional witnesses for further review.

Background: Act 5 (2017) added state limits on state agencies sharing identifying information for the purpose of creating registries and established a governor-plus-attorney-general check before entering certain federal deputization agreements. S.44, as described at the hearing, would keep the governor's approval requirement but remove the current emergency exception that can let local agencies enter agreements in certain declared emergencies. The bill, according to the legislative counsel summary offered at the hearing, would take effect on passage.

Next steps: Committee members said they will circulate the ACLU's suggested draft language, hear law-enforcement witnesses, and take up S.44 again at a later meeting when additional materials are available.