The Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill Monday requiring prosecutors in the commonwealth to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they believe a defendant is not a U.S. citizen, with critics voicing concern that the measure would entangle local law enforcement in some of the Trump administration’s recent excesses.
The bill is identical to one that passed the Republican-controlled Senate a year ago, but which was not taken up in the Democratic-majority state House of Representatives.
Partisan control of both chambers hasn’t changed since, and Monday’s vote fell along the same basic lines as it did last year, with every Republican and a handful of Democrats from more politically purple districts in support.
The bill is a response to the “escalating threat” of crime from unlawful immigrants, said bill sponsor Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie County.
The nation has “witnessed a disturbing surge in violent crimes committed by individuals who have entered our country illegally,” Laughlin said, crimes which are “not isolated incidents, they are part of a disturbing pattern that mandates our immediate attention and action.”
The bill “is not about targeting migrants as a whole,” Laughlin said, but rather “individuals who are in our country illegally and have committed crimes.”
The language of the bill is broader than just illegal entrants, however. It would require that prosecutors in Pennsylvania notify ICE if they have information “reasonably indicating” that a criminal defendant is not a citizen.
As Democrats have pointed out, President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has involved ICE erroneously targeting U.S. citizens and moving to deport lawful noncitizens based on thin evidence of criminal activity that has later been thrown out by a judge.
“Unfortunately there have been some abuses that it’s important our local officials are not connected to,” said Sen. Art Haywood, D-Philadelphia, citing the 2012 case in which Lehigh County was successfully sued for detaining a U.S. citizen based on a mistaken ICE order.
Such incidents have become even more commonplace recently, Haywood said, and the risk of becoming embroiled in a lawsuit over ICE’s indiscretions is “high — so high that our local governments, including our district attorneys, should not be involved in this kind of activity,” Haywood said.
Citizens who are in the U.S. legally can have their visa revoked by a civil immigration judge after they are convicted of certain charges in criminal court; ICE’s adherence to this process has been called into question, such as with the recent detention and deportation of several Harrisburg-area Bhutanese refugees.
Given that the bill would have noncitizens be reported to ICE before adjudication of crimes that could affect their immigration status, the proposal “mandates action on mere allegations before a verdict and before due process has run its course,” said Sen. Sharif Street, D-Philadelphia.
The result, Street predicted, would be for lawful immigrants to not report crimes for fear of attracting an overzealous ICE.
“This bill goes too far, it would cause people to not interact with district attorneys and make all of us less safe,” Street said.
Proponents of the bill have cited high-profiles incidents in which someone who illegally entered the country has committed a violent crime, such as the headline-grabbing Laken Riley case that spurred federal action.
But on the whole, nearly every data set indicates that immigrants — even those who came into the country illegally — commit violent crime at a far lower rate than U.S. citizens.
A study released last year and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice reviewed criminal records in Texas and California from 2012 to 2018 and matched them with home and workplace survey data on immigration status. Those who entered the country illegally committed violent crimes at less than half the rate of U.S. citizens, the study found, and committed drug offenses at only about 40% of the per-capita rate for those born in the U.S.
The study was scrubbed from the justice department’s website in January, shortly after Trump took office.