Richard Kosich: Montgomery County Commissioners say ‘Sorry, no dice’ to cooperation with ICE
Democratic Montgomery County Commissioners Neil Makhija and Jamila Winder continued their war on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by passing a March 5 resolution restricting federal immigration enforcement from using county property or resources for noncriminal investigations.
The less-than-dynamic duo claim their duties include “protecting public safety” and that they have “a commitment to the rule of law,” but by limiting cooperation with federal law enforcement they are doing just the opposite, and they know it.
Their resolution also appears to be a cowardly capitulation to certain local activist “immigration groups,” who’ve been pushing the commissioners to take further action to protect “residents” from ICE enforcement, even though President Trump won Pennsylvania in the 2024 election largely because of his deportation agenda.
Commissioner Makhija, in particular, has made it clear that since Montgomery County residents “did not vote for what’s going to happen at the national level,” the county is justified in obstructing local federal law enforcement actions.
But by pushing back against the President’s signature agenda issue, Makhija and Winder’s messaging is unmistakable: Montgomery County will provide cover for illegal aliens by effectively shielding them from federal law enforcement, even if it endangers the public’s safety in the process.
What does the “Resolution to Safeguard Constitutional Rights, Protect Public Safety and Ensure the Proper Use of County Resources” do?
The measure, approved by the Democratic-controlled board, formally adopts the County’s existing lax immigration enforcement policies and establishes clear restrictions regarding the use of County-owned resources or property not expressly authorized by the County.
Specifically, the resolution prohibits ICE from utilizing parking lots, vacant lots, or garages as a staging area, processing location, or operations base for civil immigration enforcement.
And since ICE sometimes needs large spaces to set up officers, cars, and equipment for operations, restricting access to such potential staging areas can negatively impact federal immigration enforcement activities, or potentially derail them completely.
Even the Philadelphia Inquirer, which considers itself part of the local resistance media, had to acknowledge that “banning the use of potential staging areas can complicate the agency’s logistics.” That, of course, is the entire point.
The measure also codifies the county’s rebuke of entering into a voluntary 287(g) agreement, which would’ve allowed ICE to use county resources, and further codifies that county employees will not comply in federal civil immigration operations without a judicial warrant or subpoena.
Ironically, the County’s March 5 press release contains a disclaimer which states that the resolution “does not restrict or interfere with the execution of lawful judicial warrants or the enforcement of criminal law,” even though the judicial subpoena requirement, in particular, actually violates 8 U.S.C. § 1373 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits state and local governments from restricting the sharing of immigration information.
Commissioner Makhija, an attorney by trade, apparently needs to brush up on Title 8, Chapter 12 of the U.S. Code.
Reality intrudes upon commissioners’ justification for resolution
Commissioner Makhija defended passing the board’s resolution by publicly stating that “This resolution is about protecting the constitutional rights of every resident and the rule of law in Montgomery County.”
Commissioner Winder, for her part, called it a “new layer of policy to prevent an unwanted federal invasion,” all with a straight face.
Winder is a member of the party that opened up the U.S.’s Southern border during the Biden administration and allowed an unprecedented invasion of some 10–11 million illegal aliens into our country.
The irony was apparently lost on her, however, as she further expounded that “We’ve taken a lot of care in thinking through how we stand up for all of our residents.”
Apparently, neither Commissioner has been keeping up on current events.
If they had, they would know about a drive-by shooting in Norristown between two alleged rival sex traffickers on February 13, 2026, which led investigators to uncover two competing prostitution operations running between New York City and the Montgomery County Capitol.
Efran “Guerro” Flores-Rodriguez, 24, of Norristown, and Fernando “Leo” Meza-Ramirez, 42, of Corona, N.Y., were both subsequently arrested on charges related to human trafficking and illegal firearms. Flores-Rodriguez is also charged with the Attempted Murder of Ramirez.
Police said Meza-Ramirez, a Mexican national, was in the country illegally and believed Flores-Rodriguez was as well.
Court docs further reveal that many of the women trafficked were also underage.
Of course, neither Commissioner is particularly concerned about the potentially negative ramifications of their war on ICE, like inadvertently helping facilitate the sex-trafficking of children, as they enjoy qualified immunity which protects government officials from civil lawsuits while acting in their official capacity.
Commissioners’ real hidden agenda exposed
At the heart of the Commissioners’ justification for their resolution lies a fundamental contention regarding how best to achieve public safety.
According to the resolution, public safety is best achieved “through trust and collaboration between residents and local government,” which meets the needs of local residents, and “not as a regional branch of the federal government.”
Apparently, the Commissioners are unaware that cooperation between federal and local governments also enhances public safety.
That’s because federal policy was clearly written with the idea in mind that state and local authorities cooperating with each other (and certainly not acting antagonistically) in enforcing federal immigration laws, just like they would for any other law.
It’s perplexing, then, why Commissioners Makhija and Winder are doubling down on their reckless, obstructionist policies instead of allowing cooperation between local officials and ICE to rid criminal illegal aliens like “Guerro” and “Leo” from our streets.
Some clues as to their true intentions, however, can be gleaned from the County’s March 5 press release, the Commissioners’ own public statements, and resolution itself.
Commissioner Makhija, for example, tipped his hand by stating the resolution “has nothing to do with immigration policy,” but rather was about limiting cooperation with an agency that has used “extreme tactics,” and has “ceased to function as an agency enforcing law but instead is creating lawlessness.”
Critics, however, would disagree vehemently with his characterization of ICE as an agency “creating lawlessness” and instead point to Makhija’s assessment as symptomatic of his own personal proclivities regarding federal immigration enforcement, especially under a hardline Republican administration.
Perhaps the biggest self-own can be found in the text of the resolution itself, which references Montgomery County’s opposition to “mass scale detention centers” and expresses their concerns over the “rapid expansion of ICE’s operations” in the region, while declaring that federal civil immigration enforcement operations (unrelated to criminal investigations) will “undermine public trust” and “disproportionately target individuals based on race, ethnicity, or perceived immigration status.”
Zero corroborating facts, however, are provided backing up these claims regarding undermining public trust and the targeting of individuals, while their opposition to the proposed detention centers is clearly a policy choice that has no relevancy to the main tenants of the passed resolution.
Expressing their personal policy preference can also be seen as being essentially political in nature, which only helps reinforce the notion that this is a purely partisan exercise orchestrated to deliberately obstruct federal law enforcement activities the Commissioners so vociferously disagree with.
Commissioner Winder acknowledges as much by declaring “Yes, we have our political affiliations, but we also know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.”
Suddenly, helping enforce federal immigration laws has become “evil” in the mind of Commissioner Winder.
Why this matters
By issuing their March 5 resolution, Makhija and Winder are deliberately helping obstruct enforcing our nation’s immigration laws, as outrageous as that may sound, in favor of potentially allowing criminal aliens wanted on serious local and federal charges to go free.
Worse, it also raises serious legal and ethical concerns about the Commissioners’ hidden agenda in opposing federal immigration enforcement in the county.
That agenda, apparently, involves pushing policies like those recently codified in Montgomery County by selfish, partisan government officials consecrating their anti-Trump bona fides in an effort to push back on the President’s pro-enforcement policies.
And what could be more political than that?
Richard F. Kosich is a freelance writer and community organizer/activist in Conshohocken, Vice-Chair of the Colonial Republicans, and Chair of the Conshohocken Borough Republican Committee (CBRC). Opinions are his own.
