Republican-led states are pledging their resources to support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, setting up a likely legal clash with immigrant advocates who say some measures violate the law.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Sunday he signed an agreement with the Customs and Border Protection allowing the Texas National Guard to make immigration arrests. Executive orders from governors in Indiana and Nebraska direct law enforcement agencies to cooperate with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Tennessee lawmakers approved in January a measure that would add a state chief immigration enforcement officer and create a felony offense for local officials who vote for sanctuary city policies. Bills filed in Missouri and Mississippi would empower bounty hunters to find people in the country living without legal permission.
The proposals have the potential to accelerate federal deportation efforts that rely on cooperation with police departments and other state and local agencies. Republican state officials are heeding the Trump administration’s call to assist with immigration enforcement as well as punish sanctuary jurisdictions. Narrower efforts on work authorization verification, however, have triggered concern from the business community that employers could be unfairly penalized.
The state actions face pushback. The ACLU of Tennessee is preparing a legal challenge to the state measure that would criminalize local officials, citing constitutional concerns, the organization said Jan. 30.
“Although all of those measures aren’t yet in place, and we don’t really know what state-level immigration enforcement may look like in the future, it’s very clear that there’s groundwork being set,” Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said.
Federal Cooperation
States are considering wide-ranging immigration proposals and narrower bills that would affect employment verification and driver’s licenses. Opponents have raised questions over their legality and the cost to implement changes.
The Tennessee Legislature passed a bill (S.B. 6002) Jan. 30 that would create a $5 million grant fund for local governments to support federal immigration enforcement. Democratic lawmakers argued provisions that criminalize and allow for removal proceedings against sanctuary city officials are unconstitutional.
Gov. Bill Lee (R), who supports the bill, had called on lawmakers to back Trump’s immigration priorities. The federal government alone doesn’t have the capacity to address illegal immigration, state Sen. Bo Watson (R) said during floor debate on Jan. 29.
“We realize that when President Trump was elected, and when he began enforcing what he said he was going to do, that it would require coordination and cooperation and collaboration with the state,” Watson said. “There is no other way to do it.”
Some of the state bills aim to shore up the legal limitations the federal government faces in its authority over local governments, said Rick Su, professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, at a press briefing hosted by the Local Solutions Support Center. The group fights against state preemption.
The federal government can’t mandate that state or local officers enforce federal immigration law, but state governments don’t have the same restrictions, he said. Local officials have a limited defense against states that attempt to exact control, he said.
“The truth is, a state power over local officials is quite extensive,” Su said. “I do want to highlight, however, that we are in uncharted territory.”
Employment Verification
Florida lawmakers also approved a measure making the commissioner of agriculture the state’s immigration czar and penalizing government officials who don’t comply with immigration enforcement. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has said he’ll veto the measure in favor of his own proposal.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said Jan. 29 that legislation to force local police assistance with federal deportations is a priority this session. Abbott in January directed the state Department of Public Safety to help find and arrest people with active warrants who are in the country illegally. He said on social media Sunday that an agreement signed with Customs and Border Protection gives the National Guard “the power of immigration officials to make immigration arrests,” effective immediately.
The bills would go beyond deportation cooperation. Employers in Nebraska would have to use E-Verify to check the employment authorization of workers under a pending bill (L.B. 532). The federal program allows businesses to check whether their employees are eligible to work in the US. The measure is a step to ensure “that if you’re here in Nebraska, you’re legally supposed to be here,” state Sen. Kathleen Kauth (R), the bill sponsor, said in an interview.
Many Nebraska businesses already use E-Verify, but the bill’s penalties raise concerns for employers, such as in the case of unintentional errors, Bryan Slone, president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in an interview. Penalties could include license suspensions for employers that don’t comply.
The bill also does nothing to solve the issue of needing more documented workers, Slone said. Nebraska has 50,000 open jobs that employers can’t fill on any given day across industries, he said.
The chamber is part of a coalition advocating for effective solutions “for significantly larger numbers of legal immigrants to come to the state and meet our workforce demands,” Slone said.
“We need young people and young families moving to the United States and certainly moving to Nebraska to meet our needs for the next coming decades,” Slone said.
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