Sponsors (4)
The bill centralizes DHS authority to identify and remove gang-affiliated noncitizens—strengthening public-safety enforcement and formal oversight—but expands mandatory detention, narrows humanitarian and due-process protections for migrants, and raises fairness and cost concerns.
Immigrants assessed as gang members or active supporters can be more readily denied admission or removed, potentially reducing community public-safety risks from gang-affiliated noncitizens.
DHS must use a formal process (with review, parliamentary notice, and periodic reconsideration) to designate criminal gangs, increasing transparency and administrative oversight versus ad hoc practices.
DHS is required to report the number of noncitizens detained under the new mandatory-detention category, improving congressional and public visibility into detention use and scale.
Immigrants (including lawful residents and asylum seekers) may be denied admission, relief, or removed based on broadly worded or retroactively applied gang definitions, risking wrongful exclusion or deportation and fairness concerns.
The bill excludes people deemed gang-affiliated from asylum, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) protections, and certain parole eligibility, removing humanitarian protections for vulnerable individuals fleeing persecution or danger.
Mandatory detention for those labeled gang-affiliated will increase the number held in immigration custody, raise detention costs for taxpayers, and limit judges' ability to release noncitizens pending removal proceedings.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Defines "criminal gang" in immigration law, makes gang membership/participation grounds for inadmissibility/removal, expands mandatory detention, and limits certain immigration protections.
Official title: To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to aliens associated with criminal gangs, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 6, 2025 by Vernon G. Buchanan · Last progress February 6, 2025
Creates a new statutory definition of “criminal gang” and makes membership or participation in such gangs a basis for inadmissibility, deportability, and mandatory detention for noncitizens. Authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, with Attorney General consultation, to administratively designate and publish criminal-gang entities under a new process with notice, review, classified-evidence procedures, and limited judicial review; bars certain immigration benefits (asylum, TPS, SIJ, certain parole) for people covered by the new gang grounds; requires annual DHS reporting; and makes the changes effective on enactment and retroactive to prior conduct.