States press migrant bans
‘Anti-sanctuary’ bills are making inroads
MIAMI – While the Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration hasn’t made great strides because of court challenges and a reluctant Congress, some Republican states are building their own legislative wall against undocumented immigrants.
Arkansas recently banned “sanctuary cities,” where local governments don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Republicans in Michigan, Montana and North Carolina are pushing similar bans.
And now Florida is on the verge of passing its own “anti-sanctuary” bill, which moved through the state House of Representatives on Wednesday and is headed to the state Senate.
Democrats, immigration activists and civil rights groups are trying everything they can to stop the Florida measure. The ACLU even issued a “travel alert” to people considering a vacation in the Sunshine State because, the organization says, travelers “could face risks of being racially profiled and being detained without probable cause.”
But the GOP controls both chambers of the state legislature, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis – a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump who made waves during his 2018 campaign after airing an ad in which he helped his daughter build a tiny border wall – is echoing the president in his push for the bill.
“We do not want to be in a situation where we have more angel parents,” DeSantis said at a news conference in March where he spoke alongside parents whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants. “I hope that the Legislature moves quickly this session.”
The push to ban sanctuary cities has flourished in recent years. Texas
passed a bill barring sanctuary cities in 2017, and Iowa and Tennessee passed anti-sanctuary bills in 2018. In fact, the number of all immigration-related bills passed by statehouses has increased dramatically since Trump took office, from 70 in 2016 to 175 in 2018, data from the National Conference of State Legislatures shows.
That flood has not surprised people like John Rowe, the retired chairman and CEO of utility giant Exelon, who has been fighting anti-immigration legislation in his home state of Illinois and his part-time home of Florida.
While he says he opposes – “almost violently” – Trump’s actions and rhetoric bashing illegal immigrants, Rowe said the anti-immigrant push cannot be entirely blamed on the president.
“I’m not sure if it’s trickling down or trickling up,” Rowe said. “He didn’t create these issues. They represent real concerns of a large percentage of old-fashioned Americans.”
But some statehouses are moving legislation that would make life far easier for immigrants.
With Democrats now controlling the statehouse in Albany, legislators are considering a bill to make New York an open “sanctuary state” that prevents local cities from detaining undocumented immigrants solely for federal immigration authorities. The state also is considering a bill to allow some undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. And even in Arkansas, which passed its own antisanctuary city bill this month, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson also signed two new laws that allow undocumented immigrants enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, to pay in-state tuition for state colleges and to get nursing licenses once they’ve graduated.
That follows an emerging trend in which more states are using occupational licensing bills to grant immigrants broader rights. In 2018, nine states passed laws making it easier for immigrants to get certified and licensed to work in specific fields, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum, a group that advocates on behalf of immigrants, said the trend shows how states that have been historically hostile toward immigrants can gradually change course.
Noorani’s group has tried to expand immigrant rights by appealing to business, faith and law enforcement leaders. In the case of Arkansas, he said, state leaders realized that they had a statewide nursing shortage and that immigrants could help fill the gap.
“It seems like it was a bit of pragmatism that got the state beyond the ideology that you see in a lot of other places,” Noorani said. “A bill like that allows conservatives to take a step forward and realize that the world is not going to break down. In this environment, those positive things are more important than ever.”