WASHINGTON — Marylanders have for months faced high grocery prices and rising energy bills. Polls show affordability is a major issue. But lawmakers in Annapolis have focused on a more divisive topic: immigration.

While the state legislature has been slow to address cost concerns, they moved quickly to act against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, activity in the state. In one of its first acts this session, the state legislature targeted ICE, banning cooperation between the agency and local police, which saw certain counties’ police forces inform ICE when they arrested someone who was in America illegally.

With the Trump administration’s deportation objectives expanding in the state, and amid national turmoil over the killing of two American citizens, political analysts said that the emphasis is no surprise.

“There’s a lot of important issues to Democrats and to the left,” Roger Hartley, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Baltimore, said. But, he added, immigration “is at the top of everyone’s minds.”

Public opinion is clear on affordability. Everyone wants lower prices. It’s harder to gauge support for the 287(g) agreements — the official designations of formal agreements between ICE and law enforcement. They authorize local police to check whether people in custody have warrants for ICE detention.

A poll initiated by the Maryland House Freedom Caucus, a hard-line conservative group in the state legislature that supports the agreements, found that a majority of Maryland residents support them.

Del. Matt Morgan, a St. Mary’s County Republican who chairs the caucus, told The Baltimore Sun that prioritizing the 287(g) agreements went against public expectations to focus on kitchen table issues.

“The public is expecting (a) safer, more affordable, more prosperous Maryland,” Morgan said. “That’s not what they are getting. They’re getting activist legislation that I don’t see how in the world it makes us any safer as a society.”

The poll was conducted before the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed by ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 7and 24, respectively. Their deaths sparked heated debate across the country over the Trump administration’s deportation operations, leading the administration to scale back its operations in Minnesota and to the current shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Mileah Kromer, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Institute of Politics, said that public priorities can shift rapidly. Kromer released a poll in December that asked Marylanders to describe the most important issue facing the state. Affordability emerged as a top issue across the spectrum, from health care to energy bills.

“It’s clear that Marylanders are very concerned about general cost-of-living issues,” Kromer said. “That is not to say that they are not very interested in other issues.”

Kromer pointed to Maryland’s status as a solid-blue state politically. Recent national polls show immigration as a priority issue for Democrats.

She also noted that polls are snapshots in time. And priorities could have shifted, or awareness increased, since Good and Pretti’s killings.

Although Democrats have long opposed Trump’s immigration policies, Kromer said events like the deaths in Minneapolis could make immigration something “that people think about every day.”

There’s also a political angle to an anti-ICE emphasis. The people most likely to vehemently oppose the Trump administration’s ICE operations in Maryland are those most likely to vote in a Democratic primary.

“They want to satisfy their base,” Hartley said. “And that’s what the base wants right now.”

“They’re going to talk about affordability, but they’re going to rile up their voters first — on the right and the left — get them excited, and then know that they’re going to vote,” Hartley added. “Then they’re going to sprinkle in all the other issues they care about.”

Since session began, Democratic leadership has largely abstained from passing legislation to address costs. So far, their efforts have consisted of a rebate that will hardly move the needle for families paying their energy bills.

Democratic operative Len Foxwell told The Sun that the session still has time to address affordability.

“The emphasis of Gov. Moore and the legislature on keeping ICE out of our communities and away from innocent and law-abiding people is entirely appropriate,” Foxwell said. “Our state leaders had to step up and meet the moment, and I believe they have.”

“The affordability issues, because of their fiscal and economic complexity, take more time to unpack,” Foxwell added.

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