Sponsors (4)
The bill strengthens tools for identifying and denying benefits to alleged gang-affiliated individuals to bolster public safety and reduce perceived abuse of immigration protections, but does so by narrowing procedural protections and expanding grounds (including retroactive and broad predicates) that risk wrongful denials, deportations, and higher enforcement costs.
Law enforcement and U.S. communities: DHS and DOJ can designate and publicize dangerous gang groups and apply stricter vetting, which should make it easier to identify, coordinate against, and reduce the presence of gang-affiliated individuals.
Taxpayers and state/federal government: The bill codifies grounds to deny asylum, TPS, and certain immigration benefits to alleged gang members, which may reduce fraud/abuse of protections and lower some public costs associated with admitting or sheltering ineligible applicants.
Immigrants and oversight bodies: The bill establishes a judicial review path (D.C. Circuit), administrative record requirements, and annual reporting to Judiciary Committees, increasing legal avenues to challenge designations and congressional transparency about detentions under the new rules.
Immigrants (including those accused of gang ties) and local governments: The designation process permits use of classified evidence, limits disclosure, and bars challenging the validity of designations in removal proceedings, substantially restricting due process and the ability to rebut allegations.
Immigrants, taxpayers, and state governments: Broad predicate offenses (including immigration offenses and conspiracies) plus retroactive application could sweep in people for tenuous or past associations, increasing detentions/removals, raising enforcement costs, and creating fairness concerns.
Asylum-seekers, children, and victims coerced into gangs: Making asylum, TPS, and parole ineligible on new gang grounds risks denying protection to people who were forced or threatened into gang involvement or otherwise persecuted, endangering vulnerable individuals.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds a "criminal gang" definition and makes gang membership or knowing participation a ground for inadmissibility and deportability, while authorizing DHS/AG to designate gangs.
Introduced February 6, 2025 by Vernon G. Buchanan · Last progress February 6, 2025
Creates a new immigration-law definition of “criminal gang” (groups of five or more whose primary purpose includes certain crimes or groups designated by the Department of Homeland Security in consultation with the Attorney General) and makes membership in, or knowing participation in, such gang activity a ground for refusing admission to the United States and for removal. It applies to decisions by consular officers, DHS, and the Attorney General and gives DHS/AG authority to designate groups as criminal gangs; the bill does not include new funding or deadlines.