Montgomery County launches ICE reporting portal to track enforcement on county property

Montgomery County on Monday unveiled a new web-based portal for residents to report U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on county-owned property, County Executive Mark Eldridge announced.

"The ICE reporting portal is an easy access website that allows our community to share information about ICE activity within the county," Eldridge said, adding the tool sits alongside recent county legislation to limit federal activity on county property.

Council President Natalie Fani Gonzales said the portal centralizes information about several recently passed local laws and resources, and will include videos and one-page guides in multiple languages. "If you go to the website, which is montgomerycountymd.gov/protecting, you'll see the list of resources that we have, including the phone number for CASA's rapid response hotline," Gonzales said.

County officials described two reporting pathways. Reports alleging county mask/consent violations will be reviewed by the Office of the County Attorney, which assesses whether there is sufficient evidence to pursue a citation; reports of ICE staging or operations on public property will go to the Department of Transportation and the Montgomery County Police Department for review and trend analysis, Earl Stoddard, assistant chief administrative officer, said. He said reports will be collected in a SharePoint file and reviewed by staff, but the portal is not monitored in real time and will not trigger immediate police responses.

Stoddard said the county expects early test or "dummy" submissions and will decide reporting formats after seeing incoming data, but he added there is no plan to withhold valid information from public release indefinitely. "There’s no mechanism by which we could shield this information from release to the public ultimately," he said, while also noting the county will determine how to release data after validating reports.

Officials said the portal is intended to help the county identify parking lots or other public spaces where ICE activity is concentrated so Montgomery County can consider nonpolice measures — such as installing signage, gates or other barriers — and coordinate with municipalities. Luisa Cardona said signage is already posted at some sites and the Department of General Services is printing official signs for county buildings and parking lots; the Silver Spring Civic Center and the Department of Health and Human Services at the Hungerford Building were cited as existing locations with signage.

County executive and council leaders framed the portal as a data-gathering and community-protection tool, not a real-time emergency response system. Officials pointed residents to partner hotlines for immediate assistance — for example, CASA’s rapid-response line or the Gilchrist Immigration Resource Center — and said the portal supplements those direct-service mechanisms.

The county did not provide a single-dollar budget line for the portal; Stoddard described the work as technology-office hours and development time over the past several weeks and called the cost "relatively nominal." He said no additional staff were hired to operate the portal.

The briefing left open exactly how and when trend data will be published; county officials said they will decide public reporting mechanics after reviewing early submissions. The portal and related materials are at montgomerycountymd.gov/protecting.