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Alabama House Committee Approves Immigration Detention Bill • Alabama Reflector

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An Alabama House committee on Wednesday approved legislation that would allow local law enforcement agencies to arrest undocumented immigrants.

Members of the House Public Safety and Homeland Security committee approved HB 376, sponsored by Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, on a voice vote. The vote came after the committee sent the bill to a subcommittee to make changes to the legislation.

“I’m very hopeful that we can provide every tool we need to keep our community safe, and we’ll see what happens from here, all the way to the legislative process,” Yarbrough said in an interview after the passage. “I am happy with the changes. I think that with good legislation you should strive for a compromise and preserve the interests of all good parties involved. So that’s what we tried to do.”

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Republican members of the committee acknowledged their concerns about the legislation.

“I think we have addressed all of our concerns in this compromise,” said Rep. Ron Bolton, R-Northport. “I know the sheriffs are strongly opposed to the overall bill, but I think it is workable.”

Jimmy Lambert, executive director of the Alabama Sheriffs Association, said in an interview after the committee meeting that sheriffs are concerned about how the bill will impact their operations across the state.

“We don’t have the resources to enforce immigration,” he said. “Sheriffs can support it, but there is already an agency that does that.”

Immigration to Alabama is low compared to the rest of the country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 3.8% of Alabama’s population is foreign-born, compared to 14% for the country as a whole.

The committee retained key elements of the bill, which would allow sheriffs and municipal police jurisdictions to enter into agreements with the federal government to enforce immigration law. Under current state law, these schemes are limited to the Alabama Attorney General’s office.

The legislation allows agencies to “arrest any individual based on the individual’s status as an illegal alien or for a violation of a federal immigration law, and transport them to detention facilities as authorized under federal law.”

Law enforcement should attempt to confirm a person’s immigration status when someone is detained and should obtain assistance from interpreters if there is a language barrier.

When in doubt, officers and deputies should contact the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Law Enforcement Support Center to obtain information regarding an individual’s immigration status.

The bill prohibits law enforcement agencies from detaining individuals solely to determine their immigration status, unless ICE has provided written instructions to detain the individual based on the individual’s immigration status.

The bill also limits the detention of immigrants to 48 hours unless a federal judge or magistrate signs an order extending the detention.

The original version Yarbrough submitted included a provision that would deny funding to an agency for violating the terms of the law.

The new version requires the Attorney General’s Office to report the violation to the governor, who will then issue a press release detailing the violation. It also added that nothing in the bill violates the U.S. Constitution or the Alabama Constitution.

Critics compared the legislation to HB 56, the 2011 anti-immigrant law that allowed law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of those they stop, detain or arrest. A coalition of civil rights groups challenged the bill that eventually became law, banning law enforcement from enforcing key provisions of the legislation in a 2013 court ruling.

“Clearly we should read the bill as a replacement, we didn’t see that,” said Katie Glenn, a policy fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “I think the reality of the situation is that we can look back at HB 56 and see what happened in Alabama and what will happen if we target people based on their immigration status.”

The legislation heads to the floor of the Alabama House. The bill will take three legislative days to pass. There are still six days of hearing to go.

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