Sponsor
Marsha Blackburn
Senator · R-TN
Senator · R-TN
The bill substantially expands federal coordination, data-sharing, funding, and local participation in immigration enforcement—improving enforcement capacity and reducing local budget uncertainty while increasing detainee transfers, privacy and civil‑rights risks, fiscal exposure, and reduced avenues for accountability.
State and local law-enforcement and corrections agencies will receive sustained federal funding and reimbursements (for training development, incarceration, transport, equipment, and data submission), reducing local budget burdens and helping cover the costs of cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.
State and local officers gain clearer authority, standardized procedures (transfer circuits/schedules, IRP), and faster mechanisms to detain and transfer removable noncitizens to federal custody, improving coordination and speeding federal processing of removals.
Federal agencies and law enforcement will have a centralized immigration-violation data capability (NCIC centralization and authorized data collection) and related infrastructure, improving cross-jurisdictional identification and background checks.
Immigrants (including lawful noncitizens in some cases) and their communities face substantially increased risk of identification, arrest, longer detention, transfers to federal custody, family separation, and chilling of cooperation with police due to expanded local enforcement, data-sharing, and expedited transfer mechanisms.
The bill limits civil remedies and reduces accountability for local agencies and officers (broad immunities and weaker financial recovery by victims), which could lower incentives to supervise misconduct and leave harmed individuals with fewer monetary remedies.
The Act authorizes open-ended federal spending (e.g., indefinite annual appropriations and new detention facilities) and expands enforcement capacity in ways that create material fiscal exposure for taxpayers and reduce Congress's near-term budgetary control.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Expands and funds federal-state interior immigration enforcement: training, data sharing, grants, detention capacity, reimbursement, and immunity for cooperating state/local officers.
Official title: Provide for enhanced Federal, State, and local assistance in the enforcement of the immigration laws, to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act, and to authorize appropriations to carry out the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.
Introduced January 16, 2025 by Marsha Blackburn · Last progress January 16, 2025
Requires the Department of Homeland Security to produce training materials and an online portal for State and local law enforcement to assist with investigating, identifying, detaining, transporting, and transferring noncitizens who violate U.S. immigration laws. It expands and funds enforcement programs (including the Institutional Removal Program), requires data sharing and reporting, creates grants for equipment and detention capacity, and conditions certain federal payments on state cooperation. Creates civil liability protections for State and local officers and agencies when assisting federal immigration enforcement, mandates information flows into federal law-enforcement databases, authorizes open-ended DHS funding to implement the law, and directs construction or acquisition of additional detention facilities and a reimbursed transfer/detention process for apprehended unlawfully present aliens.