Dive Brief:
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The U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to move forward legislation that would preempt local “sanctuary” laws and require local law enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities beyond what federal law previously required. The bill moves to the House floor, but a full House vote has not been scheduled.
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The Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act would restrict federal law-enforcement funds and grants to jurisdictions that do not aid federal immigration enforcement and reallocate them to jurisdictions that do. It also would allow crime victims to sue local governments if the perpetrator was an undocumented immigrant released despite a federal detention request.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Feb. 9 introduced a separate bill in the Senate that “seeks to end sanctuary city policies forever” by imposing criminal penalties on state and local officials who ignore Department of Homeland Security detainer requests for undocumented immigrants, according to a press release. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., prevented the bill from moving to the Senate floor on Feb. 12.
Dive Insight:
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are increasingly targeting cities and states that have “sanctuary” policies restricting voluntary cooperation with federal immigration and limiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s access to local jails.
In January, President Donald Trump said his administration would halt federal payments to cities and states with policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement starting Feb. 1. Federal courts have previously stopped the Trump administration from cutting funding to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, and broad federal cuts have not been implemented.
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., a co-sponsor of the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act, called it “a game-changer” during the bill’s markup Thursday. “The bill simply says that if you restrict or prohibit the federal government from doing its job to enforce federal immigration law, you cannot receive related federal grant funding,” he said. “There's no compulsion, no command, no commandeering. In fact, it is ‘sanctuary’ states and cities that want to commandeer federal law by undermining the federal government's immigration enforcement every step of the way.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., argued that by coercing local governments to enforce federal laws, the bill “is a full-blown assault on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.”
“It's not enough for our colleagues that DHS now has more than 80,000 police officers of its own, more than the number of officers in New York; Chicago; LA; Houston; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Las Vegas and Dallas combined or that it has a larger annual budget than 150 nations on earth,” Raskin said. “They now also want to force every local and state police officer in America, essentially, to be deputized federal law enforcement agents with respect to immigration, to participate in their operations and to follow their policy orders.”
DHS has been shut down since Feb. 14 over Democrats’ demands that the agency place restrictions on federal immigration enforcement officers. On Thursday, the House passed legislation to fully fund DHS for the second time, but Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill to reopen the agency.
