States step up efforts to implement tougher immigration laws, group says

Efforts by state lawmakers across the U.S. to pass tougher immigration laws have intensified significantly over the past four years of the Biden administration, according to a report released Thursday by a national civil rights group.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest Latino civil rights organization in the U.S., found that state lawmakers have proposed 233 bills that the group deems “anti-immigration” — compared to 132 in 2023, 64 in 2022, 81 in 2021 and 51 in 2020.

The proposals include measures to criminalize unauthorized entry into the U.S. at the state level, restrict so-called “sanctuary” policies that limit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and address concerns about noncitizens trying to vote, which studies show is rare. Other measures would seek to limit the hiring of undocumented workers.

The report, first shared with CBS News, shows how Republican state officials across the country are increasingly seeking to challenge the federal government’s long-standing authority to set immigration and border policy.

According to LULAC researchers, the vast majority, or 97%, of immigration measures proposed in state legislatures since 2020 have been sponsored by Republican lawmakers. The report shows Texas led the way with 91 proposals to pass tougher immigration laws over the past four years.

According to the report, most of these proposals have not been passed and implemented, but in several states where the legislature is dominated by Republicans, they managed to push through.

State Immigration Law

Late last year, the Texas legislature passed an unprecedented law known as SB4 that authorized state officials to arrest, detain and prosecute migrants suspected of illegally crossing the U.S. border. It also allowed state judges to order suspected violators to return to Mexico rather than face criminal charges. At the request of the Biden administration, a federal judge ruled against the law, which remains blocked while Texas’ appeal is pending.

Following Texas’ lead, state governments in Iowa, Louisiana, Kansas and Oklahoma passed immigration laws that were nearly identical to SB4. Those measures also faced legal challenges from the Justice Department. In November, Arizona voters will decide whether to make it a state crime to cross the border from Mexico outside a legal port of entry, a measure authored by Republican state lawmakers.

Last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed one of the strictest immigration laws in the state in modern history. The act increased penalties for employers who hire unauthorized workers, revoked driver’s licenses issued by other states to undocumented immigrants, required state hospitals to collect immigration information on patients and created new crimes for transporting people without legal immigration status to Florida.

Republican state leaders have said they wanted to play a bigger role in shaping immigration policy because of record levels of illegal crossings of the southern U.S. border in recent years. They blame President Biden’s policies for the record influx, decrying them as too lenient and soft.

“Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said as he signed SB4 into law.

On the other hand, LULAC said state measures are divisive and counterproductive. Some of them, the group says, can also lead to racial bias against Latinos, since many undocumented immigrants come from Latin America.

“You really see activists among governors and attorneys general who are essentially trying to solve these problems on their own, rather than, frankly, working across party lines in Congress to push for comprehensive immigration reform, like providing a clear path to citizenship and more clearly defining what the asylum process is,” said Juan Proaño, LULAC CEO.

LULAC is entangled in a legal battle with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office recently searched the homes of several group members, confiscating their phones and laptops. Paxton’s office said it is investigating allegations of election fraud. Those searched deny any wrongdoing, and LULAC has asked the Justice Department to investigate Texas for potential civil rights violations.

Kathleen Joseph-Bush, an analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said lawsuits by states challenging federal immigration policies are another way they have changed immigration policy in recent years. Texas and other Republican-led states have challenged virtually every major immigration action by Mr. Biden, most recently persuading a court to halt a program that would have granted legal status to some undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens.

“States have been able to successfully use litigation to stop or delay nationwide immigration policies that affect hundreds of thousands of people,” Joseph-Bush said.

She noted that over the past three decades, in the absence of reforms to the immigration system by Congress, both the federal government and states have taken more unilateral action on the issue.

“The outdated nature of the immigration system, much of it dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, means it is not up to the task of the 21st century,” Joseph-Bush said. “And the difficulties that both the states and the federal government face are compounded by this lack of an updated system.”

Finn Gomez

contributed to this report.