The Michigan House voted Tuesday to keep local governments from receiving state funding earmarks if they don’t fully comply with immigration enforcement.
The Republican-backed resolution would also require local governments to provide the House with details about their immigration enforcement policies for any spending bills that provide them with special funding to come to a vote.
House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp) said it’s about keeping areas from becoming an immigration enforcement “sanctuary.”
“What I'm trying to do here is make sure that these jurisdictions that are considering these policies understand if you become a sanctuary jurisdiction, you're not going to get pork projects,” Hall said in a floor speech Tuesday defending the resolution.
But both Democrats and advocacy groups are raising alarm bells about the policy change.
House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton) told reporters he believed the policy itself was unclear.
“We’re in the land of hypotheticals a little bit here. I don’t know what this resolution is going to mean,” Puri said. "There's so much vagueness in it. We don't know who it's going to apply to, what criteria needs to be met, what funding is at risk.”
During a hearing on the resolution before the House Government Operations Committee on Tuesday, groups derided the change as creating a culture of fear and keeping communities from best serving their residents.
In its written testimony to the committee, the ACLU of Michigan took aim at wording in the resolution that doesn’t specify who exactly would review information submitted to the House.
The ACLU’s West Michigan Policy Strategist Liz Balck said the resolution could open the state up to legal action.
“No other instructions are given. Presumably state legislators will then review the documents once the documents have made their way to the House. But without proper education and training in this complex area of law, how will non-immigration officials decide what is or is not considered “subverting immigration enforcement” or whether a policy has refused “to comply with federal immigration enforcement measures”?” Balck’s written testimony read.
But Republicans say the details are being ironed out.
As for concerns about a wide ranging impact, Representative Mike Harris (R-Waterford), a former law enforcement officer, said the requirements to comply with federal immigration law are relatively straightforward.
“Coming from personal experience with dealing with (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detainers and whatnot, it's very clear what the ICE detainers are for. This is not something that's new to communities or law enforcement agencies. They know how these operate as far as the way the resolution is written,” Harris told reporters.
There’s no further legislative action needed for the resolution to take effect.
