THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY was quick to act on legislation prohibiting cooperation agreements between local police and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and the governor signed it into law less than a week later in a clear rebuke of the Trump administration.

That wasn’t Massachusetts, however, but Maryland, where state lawmakers voted last week to establish a clearer firewall between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. On Tuesday, Gov. Wes Moore signed the measure, declaring that his state would not allow its law enforcement “to be deputized by agencies that do not hold the same standards.”

Bay State leaders are responding to the same current of growing national outrage about ICE actions in Minnesota and elsewhere, but exactly what they plan to do and when they’ll do it is still taking shape. The lack of cohesion has left some activists and insiders impatient.

“There are so many states that have already taken some type of action, and we hope that Massachusetts passes something quickly, especially now that we have a lot of solid proposals on the table,” said Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy coalition.

On January 28, the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus rolled out a sweeping proposal that would reshape how police work intersects with immigration status in Massachusetts, including a ban on civil immigration arrests in and around courthouses, new limits on sharing some information with federal authorities in civil immigration cases, and a prohibition on agencies entering into so-called 287(g) agreements with ICE, deals that allow local law enforcement to investigate and in some cases make arrests over civil immigration violations.

A day later, Gov. Maura Healey offered her own plan. She signed an executive order that bans agencies under her purview from striking new 287(g) agreements and bars the use of state property for immigration enforcement staging activities. Healey separately filed legislation that would bar ICE from “sensitive locations” like courthouses, schools, and churches and allow parents to designate guardians for their children in case they are deported.

But three weeks later, it’s still not clear how the Democrats who wield supermajority margins in the House and Senate intend to stitch all the varying pieces together or on what timeline they intend to act, other than with vague promises of “urgency.”

Asked last week whether his chamber planned to take up immigration legislation or a long-awaited energy cost bill first, House Ways and Means Committee chair Aaron Michlewitz said he did not “want to put a definitive timetable on anything.”

Although he hopes to see action on both topics before the House launches its annual state budget debate in April, Michlewitz cautioned about “complexities” that cloud the picture.

Top Senate Democrats added another variable last week, when they floated another legislative measure dealing with legal action against federal officers.

The new bill, authored by Sen. Will Brownsberger of Belmont, would allow residents to sue for deprivations of constitutional rights by any official acting under the authority of federal or state law, closing what he described as a gap that currently limits redress only to cases involving officials acting with state authority.

Sweet said the proposal tackles an important issue. MIRA regularly hosts presentations to educate immigrants and others about their rights if they’re stopped by federal officials.

“One of the questions that we get again and again is, ‘Telling us our rights is well and good, but we’re seeing regularly that ICE is violating those rights, and what do we really do about that?’” she said. “So we appreciate legislation that attempts to address that very real situation that we’re hearing play out in the day-to-day.”

Sen. Cindy Friedman of Arlington, who chairs a Senate panel tasked with forging a response to the Trump administration, said her hope is for the new bill to be added to the conversation as lawmakers figure out their bigger-picture plan.

“We’re getting our pieces together. We’re vetting, we’re making sure that they can hold muster in terms of what our abilities are as a state,” said Friedman, alluding to the complicated interplay of state and federal powers that the immigration debate has raised.

The so-called PROTECT Act championed by the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, which drew co-sponsorship from 86 of the Legislature’s 198 current members, is the most wide-reaching of the three major bills in play.

Representatives held a series of closed-door meetings earlier this month to discuss the proposal. House Minority Leader Brad Jones called the discussion “frank and honest,” according to State House News Service.

Other Republicans have been more critical of the push to more forcefully limit cooperation with ICE. Gubernatorial candidate Mike Kennealy said Healey’s executive order and legislation “definitively make Massachusetts a sanctuary state,” invoking the term many immigration opponents use to describe states that have restricted local law enforcement from aiding ICE operations.

Sweet said MIRA and its allies in the Protecting Massachusetts Communities Coalition have three primary priorities: banning 287(g) agreements, prohibiting “informal collaboration” between local law enforcement and ICE, and securing state funding for immigration legal services.

The group does not have a preference on which bill Beacon Hill chooses as the means to advance reforms, but is simply “appreciative that there are now multiple vehicles on the table,” Sweet said.

Only one Massachusetts entity still has a 287(g) agreement in place with ICE: the state Department of Correction.

Under the terms of that deal, which Healey has defended, the department can notify the feds about people being released from DOC custody who do not have lawful immigration status. Corrections officers can also execute some of the duties typically performed by ICE agents, such as serving arrest warrants over immigration violations and write charging documents.

DOC turned over 164 people to ICE in 2023 and 2024, most of whom had been convicted of drug or violent offenses, according to The Boston Globe.

While the bill filed by the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and Healey’s executive order both prohibit new 287(g) agreements, neither proposal would end the existing DOC deal, and the legislative caucus’s bill explicitly excludes the state correction department from its ban on executing or renewing such arrangement.

“When you’re incarcerated under the care, the custody of the Department of Correction, that means you’ve done something pretty bad. This is prison,” Healey said at the January 29 press conference where she rolled out her order and bill. “At the end of that sentence, I think it is appropriate for our Department of Correction to notify ICE … and to give ICE the opportunity to take into custody and deport that individual.”

According to Bolts, a nonprofit publication covering democracy and the criminal justice system, Massachusetts is the only state that voted against Donald Trump in 2024 and has a Democratic governor that still has a 287(g) agreement in place after newly elected Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ordered her state’s Department of Corrections to terminate its ICE deal earlier this month.

Questions about parliamentary process further cloud the outlook for action under the Golden Dome.

Healey attached her immigration enforcement reforms to a $411 million spending bill that would address funding shortfalls at the Group Insurance Commission, Department of Transitional Assistance, Department of Correction, and more.

The House could surface the bill at any point, and lawmakers typically eschew formal public hearings on supplemental budgets submitted by governors. Top representatives might rewrite Healey’s immigration language along the way to incorporate other ideas, or leave it as is.

Meanwhile, on February 2, the House moved to send the PROTECT Act to the Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee for additional review. However, the Senate has not followed suit, leaving the measure in legislative limbo, unable to formally reach the panel that ostensibly could convene a public hearing on the topic.

A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka declined to comment on the bill’s committee status.

In the past, one branch’s sluggishness on the normally routine decision of which committee should review a bill has at times signaled broader House-Senate disagreement that slows down action.

It’s unclear in this case whether there is real conflict between the branches over how to deal with the immigration enforcement debate that’s swallowed national attention, or if it’s simply another big topic caught in the slowly turning wheels of Beacon Hill policymaking.

“This is a complex issue. Obviously, we’re in complex times related to that particular issue on immigration,” Michlewitz said. “So, you know, we’ve got some work to do.”