Sponsor
Buddy Carter
Representative · R-GA
Representative · R-GA
This bill centralizes federal power to prosecute and remove local officials and standardizes enforcement against 'sanctuary' policies—potentially increasing accountability and uniformity of immigration enforcement, but at the cost of local autonomy, immigrant trust and cooperation, and likely expensive constitutional litigation.
Residents and taxpayers: Mayors and other local executives can be removed, disqualified, or criminally held if their intentional local policies are found to have enabled preventable violent crimes, increasing local accountability and deterring municipal noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Federal law enforcement and the public: The Department of Justice is given clear, centralized authority and exclusive federal-court jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute violations, which can speed enforcement and create more uniform application of the law nationwide.
Local officials and law enforcement: Key terms (e.g., 'sanctuary city', 'undocumented immigrant') are explicitly defined in statute, reducing some legal ambiguity about who and what is covered and clarifying enforcement scope.
Local governments, immigrants, and taxpayers: The bill is likely to chill local policymaking and push cities to fully accede to federal immigration enforcement (rather than pursue local priorities), reducing local autonomy over policing and other municipal choices.
Mayors and municipal officials: Threat of federal criminal prosecution (including potential prison terms) for policy decisions creates legal uncertainty and deterrence of lawful local policy choices, even where causation between policy and crime is hard to prove.
Immigrants, witnesses, and public safety: The law’s punitive framing and enforcement pressure will likely deter immigrants and witnesses from cooperating with police or accessing services, undermining community policing and public safety.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Creates a federal offense exposing mayors of "sanctuary cities" to manslaughter-by-criminal-negligence liability if a sanctuary policy foreseeably contributed to failure to detain or remove an undocumented immigrant who later commits murder.
Creates a federal criminal offense holding mayors of designated “sanctuary cities” criminally liable for manslaughter by criminal negligence if an undocumented immigrant commits murder in the mayor’s jurisdiction and the mayor knowingly maintained or failed to repeal a sanctuary policy that materially restricted cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and directly contributed to the failure to detain or remove the person before the murder. It gives the Attorney General authority to enforce the law in federal district courts, defines key terms ("sanctuary city," "undocumented immigrant," "mayor"), and takes effect 90 days after enactment. The bill also attempts to insert a new manslaughter-style provision into Title 18 of the U.S. Code but the published insertion text is incomplete and would conflict with the existing manslaughter statute as drafted, raising legal and drafting questions. Convictions carry up to seven years imprisonment, fines, removal or disqualification from office, and federal jurisdiction for prosecution.
Official title: To establish criminal liability for mayors of sanctuary cities in cases of murder committed by undocumented immigrants within their jurisdiction, and for other purposes.
Introduced August 1, 2025 by Buddy Carter · Last progress August 1, 2025