Sponsors (28)
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Tom McClintock · Last progress January 3, 2025
The bill strengthens tools to bar and detain immigrants tied to gangs and centralizes designation and reporting, but it substantially expands detention and curtails due process — particularly for those with past conduct — creating legal instability and higher costs.
Immigrants identified as current or former gang members will be barred from entering or remaining in the U.S., aiming to reduce gang-related crime and community harm.
Federal agencies (DHS and DOJ) will have a centralized administrative designation process with periodic review to identify dangerous groups, creating a single mechanism for updating and communicating designations to law enforcement.
DHS must report annually on numbers detained under the expanded authorities, increasing data collection and congressional oversight of detention levels.
Immigrants accused of gang affiliation — including for past conduct — can lose asylum, TPS, SIJ, parole, and other forms of relief, and the bill’s retroactive application could lead to removal of long-settled individuals and legal instability.
Immigrants covered by the expansion face mandatory detention with reduced individualized parole discretion, likely increasing time in custody, detention costs, and taxpayer burden.
The designation process permits reliance on classified evidence and limits ability to contest designations in removal proceedings, raising serious due-process and transparency concerns for affected immigrants.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Creates an administrative process to designate "criminal gangs," makes gang affiliation a ground for inadmissibility/deportability, expands mandatory detention, and bars many relief forms.
Creates a new federal definition of “criminal gang,” authorizes an administrative designation process for groups of five or more people, and makes gang membership, participation, or entry in furtherance of such a gang a ground for inadmissibility and deportability. It expands mandatory detention for noncitizens covered by these grounds, bars many forms of immigration relief (including asylum, TPS, and special immigrant juvenile status) for those covered, allows DHS to detain TPS beneficiaries, and requires DHS to notify Congress and publish designations and reviews; the changes take effect on enactment and apply retroactively.