Federal Agents are Immune to State Laws

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof:...shall be the supreme Law of the Land..." Constitution of the United States, Article VI.

A few States and localities have enacted laws that purport to govern the conduct of Federal officials and agents in the discharge their official and legally-authorized duties. One law proscribes where and when Federal agents may apprehend and detain persons unlawfully present in the United States. Other laws prescribe what Federal agents may or may not wear.

State and local laws that attempt to regulate the conduct of Federal law enforcement (or any Federal official) in the conduct of their duties are flatly unconstitutional. These enactments threaten the rule of law and the bedrock principles of authority within our federally-ordered democracy. The rule of law includes all laws, not only to the laws with which we personally agree.

This essay appears to lie outside the realm of a usual report on national park system issues. It is not. The correlative powers of the Federal, State and local governments are deeply relevant to any and all Federal agencies, officers and agents - the parks and the NPS included.

This Essay Does Not Discuss the Immigration Laws of the United States

Like all other citizens of the United States, many members of conservation groups possess varied views on the immigration laws of the United States. Some of those views are personal. The organizations themselves may lack an official position on Federal immigration laws. Some environmental group believe sincerely that true environmental advocacy requires support for a very generous immigration policy – the dogma of "intersectionality." The Sierra Club is an example.

Societal views on immigration vary widely between allowing entry to any who present themselves, whether for asylum, or to seek a better life. This poetic and stirring vision of Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, was written in 1883 when the United States had 50 million people (census of 1880). At the other end of the spectrum, some oppose all immigration into a United States, currently approaching 350 million people, whether legal or illegal. Both extremes, and all intermediate positions, deserve respect and reasoned debate. But no matter which position one holds, it is immaterial to the subject of this analysis. 

Federal Supremacy and Sovereign Immunity

We can disagree over whether the applicable Federal statutes on unauthorized entry and presence of non-citizens should be enforced, or how to enforce them. But no matter how members of the environmental community view the Federal laws governing immigration, one fundamental principle that we all share is that Federal agencies, and Federal agents in the discharge of lawfully prescribed duties, obligations and authorities are completely immune to State laws and legal processes except where Congress prescribes otherwise. (Notable among such laws are the Federal pollution laws.)

A Federal officer or agent, off-duty, who commits a crime is subject to State law. But when the officer or agent acts in an official capacity, they are immune. Even if that Federal officer acts in violation of their authority, for example illegally gathers evidence, falsifies an affidavit seeking a warrant to surveil, or falsely arrests someone - the remedy for this misconduct lies in Federal law and in the Federal courts, not with an individual State or locality.

Protected Federal Areas

Federal Supremacy and Sovereign Immunity are indispensable to the creation and consistent management of national parks, refuges, forests and other federally-administered lands. Federal Supremacy is equally essential to the primacy of Federal wildlife laws.

Congress has set aside a vast array of federally-protected lands and waters and mandated that they be managed coherently as "national systems," united by a common purpose. Without Federal Supremacy or Sovereign Immunity, this is impossible. A loss of Federal Supremacy and Sovereign Immunity in one area of public policy inevitably affects such principles in all others. Even if the threat to Federal Supremacy and Sovereign Immunity arises from a political quarter we support, the threat is not permissible or tolerable.

State Supremacy Does Not Exist

A leading political figure has advocated State law enforcement officers arrest Federal agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It is inconceivable that allegedly informed political leaders espouse this position. They know better. Their words are inexcusable. They inflame the already white-hot public discourse that bedevils our nation.

One need not possess a gift of prophecy to foresee that armed State law enforcement arresting armed Federal law enforcement is recipe for unwanted outcomes. Others more learned than I may produce examples in recent history, i.e. after 1900, when State officials arrested or otherwise interfered with Federal law enforcement discharging lawful authorities.

One example occurred in November 1924 when Coconino County (Arizona) Sheriff William Campbell ordered the arrest of persons permitted by the Regional Forester of the Kaibab National Forest, for killing deer without a permit from the State. While the persons were not forest rangers, they were agents of the Forest Service carrying out Forest Service authority. In 1928, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the State's conduct was impermissible (Hunt v. United States). 

In 1832, when the Federal Government was "getting its sea legs," from South Carolina came the doctrine of interposition and nullification. Led by Vice-President and then Senator John C. Calhoun, this doctrine asserted that the State could nullify a Federal law the State deemed unconstitutional, or that a State could interpose its authority between the State's residents and the exercise of Federal authority under Federal laws.

This doctrine was resurrected in the death throes of the segregationist South in the 1950s and 1960s by Governors George Wallace and Ross Barnett, among others. Even then, it is unimaginable that in the dying days of de juresegregation, a State like Mississippi would have directed its State or local police to arrest Federal Marshalls (and yes, military personnel!!!) sent by President John F. Kennedy) to integrate James Meredith into the University of Mississippi in 1962. Mississippi officials deemed the Federal civil rights laws unconstitutional or otherwise repugnant.

It is ironic in the extreme that the current advocates of State and local police authority over Federal agents are in intellectual league with the State's rights zealots of bygone decades. And not only with them but with the much more recent Sagebrush Rebels of the 1980s onward who aver that the Federal Government, in particular the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Interior Department, has no authority to own or manage the nation's public lands. Rather, they assert, these lands belong to Utah or another of the States.

Court Decisions on Federal Supremacy

I attach two Circuit Court decisions, one from the Third Circuit regarding a New Jersey law, and one from the Ninth Circuit regarding a directive from the Executive of King County, Washington.

I attach the two for three reasons. First - both are recent. Second - both are fact-based examinations of the history of Federal immunity across virtually every conceivable area of governance. And third - because both deal with State and/or local efforts to govern the operations of DHS, or their contractors, directly or indirectly, in the administration of Federal immigration law. Both decisions firmly rejected the State and local efforts. The decisions are USA v. King County, November 2024, Ninth Circuit, and Coercivic v. Governor of New Jersey, July 2025, Third Circuit.

I attach a third case, USA v. Board of County Commissioners of Otero County, decided in December 2016 by the Tenth Circuit, that deals not with immigration but with efforts of a county in New Mexico to apply its laws to the management of Federal lands under the control of the Forest Service. The Tenth Circuit rejected any State power over Forest lands. True, the case concerned the plenary and exclusive power that the Constitution grants Congress over the property belonging to the United States. But analogously, the same Constitution gives exclusive authority to Congress over noncitizens entry and/or presence within the United States (See for example, Arizona v. United States, United States Supreme Court, 2012)

The unshakable conclusion is that State laws that attempt to regulate Federal law enforcement (or other) officials in the conduct of their duties are unconstitutional. Such enactments subvert the rule of law and the bedrock principles of our democracy.

No Commandeering

The Federal Government cannot compel the individual States or their political subdivisions, to enforce Federal immigration or any other Federal laws. The States may legally refuse to cooperate with Federal detainer requests of persons unlawfully present in the United States who are in, or about to be released from, State custody ("sanctuary" States and cities). See, for an example of “anti-commandeering,” Printz v. United States, United States Supreme Court (1997). But, States and their subdivisions are not allowed to prevent, interfere with, or deliberately undermine the enforcement of Federal immigration or other (including conservation or civil rights) laws.

Some in our political class (and citizenry) believe that adopting and enforcing laws to apprehend, detain and deport persons unlawfully present in the United States violate "human rights." Sentiments, no matter how high-minded, do not substitute for law. IF in the enforcement of these laws, Federal agents transgress the circumscribed rights granted "illegal aliens" under Title 8 of the United States Code, the criminal and/or civil remedy lies in procedures before the Federal courts.

Conclusion

We may debate the efficacy and the humanity of the nation's current immigration laws, strongly augmented by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, signed by President Bill Clinton. But no public official may challenge the legitimacy and primacy of such laws. That single point is the heart of this analysis. Public officials who challenge the legitimacy or primacy of Federal immigration (or any other) laws verge on insurrection.

Civil disobedience (as in the Civil Rights or Vietnam War era) is reserved for private citizens, who believe that there is a higher, even divine, summons, that compels opposition to the immigration laws, and the officers who enforce them. But this conviction must not degenerate into violence. Gandhi and Dr. King would similarly counsel. State and local political officials must do nothing to encourage violence against Federal agents or Federal property.