A state House bill requiring law enforcement agencies to hold immigrants lacking permanent legal status in detention for ICE passed Tuesday in the Tennessee House of Representatives Departments and Agencies Subcommittee, a day after approval in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The House bill now moves to the House State and Local Government Committee for consideration.
The legislation’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Brent Taylor R-Memphis, said while current law requires law enforcement agencies to notify immigration authorities of having an immigrant detainee, they are sometimes released before ICE can take custody of them.
Taylor’s bill would mandate that after a law enforcement agency notifies immigration authorities it has an undocumented detainee in custody, it will comply with federal requests to maintain detention of the individual up to 48 hours. This time period does not include Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. If the suspect is released after 48 hours, local law enforcement must notify ICE.
The bill applies to any sheriff’s office or municipal police department with a holding facility and a 287(g) agreement with ICE, Taylor said. The additional cost of holding the immigrant detainee for 48 hours or more will be paid by the local law enforcement agency.
Sen. Jeff Yarbro D-Nashville said the state should be reluctant to agree to an unfunded mandate with ICE.
“ICE’s operations with state and local governments have been a mess during the past year,” Yarbro said. “If you look at what’s happening in Minnesota, for instance, they have seen massive amounts of backlogs and cost to their system, and those are costs that the federal government is causing but not paying for.”
Sen. Adam Lowe R-Calhoun said ICE and local law enforcement agencies need to work together, because they share a common goal of maintaining public safety but have different purposes to carry out.
“ICE are not local law enforcement agents, they are individuals who are there for the express task of usually serving warrants,” Lowe said. “Oftentimes when they are serving those warrants, the broader scope of public safety has to be done by local folks. So it’s always good to make sure that those jurisdictions are cooperating together.”
Several other ICE related bills are under review in the General Assembly this year, as state Republican leaders, in collaboration with the Trump administration, hope to make Tennessee a “model” for the rest of the nation when it comes to immigration enforcement.
On Monday, the Senate passed a law making it a Class E felony for government officials to disclose certain records regarding immigration enforcement. These records would include the name, contact information, address and any other personal information of a federal, state or local officer who participates in immigration enforcement. Other information such as the date, time and location of immigration enforcement operational activities would be exempt from public records and inspection.
This story is part of week long news coverage of the TN General Assembly by the UT-Chattanooga PULSE Project.
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