One lawmaker in Tennessee wants to make it so that police have to send illegal immigrants accused of small crimes to “sanctuary cities” instead of sending them back to their home country.
The Tennessee Illegal Immigration Act was introduced by Republican State Rep. Todd Warner before the congressional session. The plan would also make sure that all law enforcement agencies tell federal immigration officials about people who are in the country illegally.
Warner told Fox 17 that sending migrants to a safe city might be cheaper for the state than sending them back to their home countries, even if the federal government would have to pay for the send-back costs in the end.
“Its goal is to make Tennessee safer.” He said, “It wants to hold the federal government accountable and make sure they follow immigration law. It also wants the state to get some of its costs back.”
There is a bill that says police will help send an illegal immigrant to a safe city if ICE doesn’t show up to pick them up in 48 hours. Warner said that the agency that arrested the refugees would be in charge of moving them.
Warner said that this would be paid for by Tennessee not giving the federal government the money it gets from the gas tax.
The lawmaker said he was going to add an amendment that would make it clear that the bill would only apply to illegal immigrants who are charged with a small crime. Violent criminals could still be sent back to their home country.
The above is for acts with no victims. Warner told Fox 17 that this wasn’t for someone who had done something very bad.
Hannah Smalley, who is the Advocacy and Education Manager at Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors, says the plan would split migrant families for no reason.
“The mere act of being transported away from your family is damaging,” she said to Fox 17. “This means that people, including people who have not been charged with crimes, are going to be facing these punitive consequences just based on their immigration status.”
“When U.S. citizens commit crimes and we pay a fine or we go to jail,” she said. “That’s also what immigrants do. So making this about someone’s immigration situation, which has nothing to do with any crime they might have committed, is not good for our community as a whole.
Warner said that he still needs to make some changes to the bill, but he hopes that both Democrats and Republicans will back it in the legislature.
